Herbed Compound Butter

Mmmmmm…butter. I made the herb compound butter recipe first, then the lemon compound butter recipe, and am eagerly looking forward to trying the other compound butter recipes. A half batch, yielding 1/2 cup, was plenty for pre-holiday use, though the option to make some more and freeze it is an appealing time-management maneuver before the craziness of Thanksgiving through the New Year. For the herb compound butter, I used basil because we had it on hand, a scallion, and the optional garlic clove. I envision making this with dill in the near future as well. The uses are numerous, of course—slather on bread, toast, biscuits, bagels, muffins, or scones. My first taste was on a sturdy, dense multigrain, and my first taste of the lemon was on a cherry pecan oat boule. Use on sandwiches—I’m thinking tea sandwiches, open-faced Scandinavian tea sandwiches, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Atop corn bread, quick breads or tea breads. On vegetables, whether steamed or grilled, including broccoli, asparagus, carrots, zucchini, yellow summer squash, green beans, and artichokes. Atop a baked potato or a baked sweet potato. Melted into baked winter squash of any variety—kuri, butternut, spaghetti, acorn, etc. In sautéed vegetables such as succotash, home fries, ranch fries, mushrooms. On corn on the cob. On popcorn! In pasta primavera. Garlic bread for the herb butter. Fry an egg in it. Scramble an egg or make an omelet or a frittata with it. For the horseradish, on matzoh brie! For the lemon, clafouti or pancakes or waffles. Any compound butter recipe could also be made with unsalted butter—you’ll just need to be a little more generous with the salt when seasoning to taste.

This fresh-from-your-garden-or-pantry compound butter recipe could make a perfect hostess gift, a surprising taste on a holiday table, or a great treat to pack in the cooler for a ski weekend or getaway. It only takes a few minutes and planning ahead to set the butter out to thoroughly soften. My love of lemons made the first one to try easy. I zested 3 perfect little organic lemons with unblemished skins, used the juice of just 1/2 a lemon, about 1/4 teaspoon Maldon salt, and several grinds black pepper. For travel packing, I used squat Mason jars with a wide lid and a canning funnel to make filling them easy. If I was preparing this for Thanksgiving, I might carefully roll it into a log, and then wrap it in parchment and then plastic wrap. I plan to serve it with a fresh baguette and muffins, or maybe on rice or steaks. Cook’s perk—I saved the last bit of compound butter off the spatula and pronounced it delish after schmearing it on a stone-ground wheat cracker. Looking forward to trying the pimentón and horseradish versions. All would be wonderful on baked sweet potatoes or Yukon Golds, as well as on grilled fish or meat. I used Plugrá European style salted butter—handily, it is an 8-ounce package. This was creamy and clean-tasting. I like the flavor better other European-style butters, which I found to be too cheese-like in taste and smell.

These compound butter recipes take almost no time to put together but will keep a long time in your freezer. I made the lemon compound butter first. The recipe took 5 1/2 minutes to make and had a very nice lemon flavor. I’ve used it on fish, grilled veggies, and roasted asparagus and received rave reviews. I also made the pimentón butter. This one took 3 1/2 minutes to stir together. I used this one on grilled steaks and swapped out my regular butter for it in my scalloped potatoes. This was the perfect little addition to a great meal. Next time, I plan on using smoked paprika instead of the regular variety.

If you’re having company over for dinner and want to add a very simple and affordable extra touch to the meal, get to know these compound butters. Compound butter is just butter combined with various flavors, but the combination yields a subtle sophistication that the ingredients by their lonesome might not achieve. I really enjoyed the fresh herb compound butter made with sage from a friend’s garden. I thought that the amount of sage would be overwhelming, but both my tester and I liked this butter the best; all the flavors were very present. As someone who grew up in a household where lemons were as ubiquitous as milk and bread, I also heartily approved of the lemon butter. It’s potent, but the butter seemed to soften the bitterness of the zest, which I normally find a bit off-putting, and it lent a complexity to the dish that I haven’t found when adding butter and lemon juice separately—and I’ve sauced many a dish with lemon and butter. I was less a fan of the pimentón and horseradish butters, as those flavors made the butter too one-note for my liking.

Obviously, the better your butter, the better your compound butter. I’d recommend buying (or making?) a butter of high quality, and then allowing plenty of time for softening before beating it as well as before serving it. (It took at least 10 times as long to initially soften the butter as it did to make any of them.) You may also want to mix all the other ingredients together before adding them to the butter to facilitate a more even dispersion. I ended up trying the butters on homemade country white bread, and then again on pan-seared salmon and steamed green beans. I’d imagine these could find a comfortable home in just about any savory recipe calling for salted butter as an ingredient or a condiment, with the exception perhaps of some baked goods. I used Irish Kerrygold salted butter. I let my butter sit at room temperature (still wrapped) for an hour and a half, and it was still rather hard, so I’d advise readers to allow plenty of time for it to soften. And it was more like mashing the butter, not beating it. It’s probably best to mix all the other ingredients ahead of time, as it was difficult to distribute them evenly since the butter was still a bit firm.

I tested the lemon compound butter recipe and used an unsalted butter as the base so that I could better adjust the amount of salt. I used about 1/2 teaspoon for each stick of butter. Once the butter was soft, this was a quick 5-minute recipe. We used this on chicken and broccoli over pasta and it was delicious.