Compound Butter

I have wanted to try my hand at compound butter for some time now; all the mouth-watering recipes on Pinterest are just sooo tempting!

This week I needed to prune my basil, but didn’t have enough to make a full batch of pesto so I decided compound butter would be the perfect way to use up the extra herbs.

And as long as I was softening a whole block of butter, I thought I would try a couple different recipes to see which I liked best.

I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, but one of the combinations I had seen was honey orange compound butter – and we have our own home-raised honey, so why not?

The first savoury recipe I tried was roasted garlic & dill with chives, which I plan to use on baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or perogies.

For the second savoury combo, I used the excess basil I had pruned, oregano, and some purple thyme flowers to give it a pop of color. Oh, and roasted garlic. Gotta love garlic in almost everything!

I plan to use the herbed garlic butter for pastas, steaks, and buttering grilled cheesers (I’ve already used it on grilled cheese sandwiches and it turned out AMAZING). Hmm… And I’ll bet it would be great on grilled corn on the cob…

I found that making compound butter was really easy and fairly quick once the butter was softened. And the beauty of so many different combinations really leaves it up to your imagination as to which ingredients to add!

And how much to add is up to you, too… If you love garlic, add lots. If you want a hint of citrus, add a smidge of lime zest.

It is supposed to last for a couple weeks in the fridge (remember, this is my first time making compound butter and haven’t tested the shelf life myself yet); if you want to store it longer than that, just pop it in the freezer.

The first step is to allow the butter to come to room temperature so it is nice and soft. (I used salted butter, but I’m sure you could make unsalted work as well)

I put my butter in the mixing bowl directly from the fridge so I wouldn’t have to try getting soft, sticky butter out of the packaging later.

I know at least a few of you are thinking you’ll skip the wait time by throwing your butter in the microwave – don’t do it!!!

Every time I have tried softening butter in the microwave in the past, I end up with at least part of it getting melted – and you want soft butter, not melted butter!

Once the butter is nice and soft, you get to start your gourmet recipe!

Add your ingredients of choice and then mix everything together well until it is an even consistency.

I used an electric hand mixer, but you can also mix it with a whisk or spatula (the softer the butter, the easier to mix).

Once all the ingredients are well incorporated, spoon it onto a large piece of plastic wrap, wrap it, then form it into a log.

It won’t shape perfectly at this stage since the butter is still so soft, so place your compound butter back in the fridge for a while until it hardens up a bit, but isn’t completely hard.

Now you can roll it on the counter to get a more even “roundness” to your shape.

So now that you know the process, let’s get to the recipes I tried out!

Honey Orange

As I mentioned, we have our own home-raised honey from our bees – and I had been looking for some fun recipes to use the abundance of honey we have on hand.

I don’t usually eat much sweet stuff, so I made this batch smaller than the rest.

Recipe:

1/2 cup soft butter

1/4 cup raw honey

Zest from 1 large orange

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In the future, I think I’ll save some of the orange zest and roll the simi-hardened compound butter in it to give it a bit of extra “wow factor”

I tried this out on pancakes and YUM! It had such a nice balance of sweet from the honey and fresh tartness from the orange zest.

It would also go well on cornbread, biscuits or even banana bread.

Dill & Roasted Garlic with Chives

Dill and garlic are two things I use in sooo many recipes!

They work together so well to create a complex flavour profile in recipes like mashed potatoes, creamy green beans, and creamed peas & potatoes.

This compound butter will also go great on baked potatoes for BBQ season.

Recipe:

1 cup soft butter

1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped

3-4 cloves roasted garlic, diced

1 tablespoon fresh chives, chopped

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Herbed Garlic Butter

Basil, Oregano, and Thyme are staples in my herb garden.

I love using them in Italian dishes like lasagna, fettuccine or herbed olive bread.

I already used this compound butter on grilled cheese sandwiches with the olive bread and it was to die for!

Recipe:

1 cup soft butter

3 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped

2 tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh thyme

3-4 cloves roasted garlic, chopped

Clearly, I need to hone my skills to get perfectly round logs – but hey! Once the butter is melted over a juicy steak, no one will care if it wasn’t perfectly shaped!

So what do you think? Which combos should I try next?

Drop a comment below!