The Simple Method For Making Compound Butter

Elevating a dish is often about the details. While perfecting the technique for grilling a ribeye or searing a fresh tuna steak is vital for home cooks, genuinely elevating those preparations may require you to take an extra step or use a little creativity. Compound butter is just the sort of chef-inspired ingredient that takes it from a good dish to one of excellence.

Compound butter can take a little time to prepare as you'll need to plan ahead or wait for butter to soften, chop fresh herbs or zest citrus fruit, or even prepare crawfish meat if you're adventurous enough to try a crawfish compound butter. Not to mention the work of mashing the ingredients together with your butter. But if there were a way to build a compound butter that's simple, you'd really have no excuse for not trying it. Rather than using elbow grease to incorporate all your delicious herbs and flavorings into the butter, why not let your food processor do it for you?

Start with chopped pieces of butter at room temperature or slightly cooler since you don't want the butter to melt, and put them in your food processor along with aromatics such as garlic, dill, parsley, chives, and lemon. Allow the food process to run until all the ingredients are incorporated.

Using a food processor lets you skip nearly all the prep work. Of course, if you're adding rosemary to your compound butter, you'll want to strip the fragrant, flavorful leaves from the woody stem and discard it, but for other soft herbs, you can just toss them in. Even citrus zest can be added in larger pieces as the blades of the food processor will chop and evenly distribute them throughout your mixture.

Once your aromatics are combined with your butter, use a spatula to scrape the contents of the bowl onto plastic wrap and roll the butter into a log shape. Be sure to wrap it so it's completely sealed and then stick it into the refrigerator. Once your compound butter has hardened, you have your delicious finishing touch ready for steak, garden fresh veggies, corn on the cob, and more.