One of the simplest foods we have is also one of the best-liked and most useful. Butter has been around a very long time, and it’s no surprise that over the millennia we’ve figured out a million ways to use it. So we asked Chef Jerry Pellegrino, just what exactly is butter and what can we do with it?
Butter is a dairy product produced by churning milk or cream to separate the fat (butterfat) from the liquid (buttermilk). It is a solid, creamy emulsion at room temperature, containing at least 80% milk fat. Primarily used as a spread, cooking fat, or baking ingredient, it is a rich source of calories and fat-soluble nutrients.
I can clearly remember being taught how to make butter back in kindergarten one summer. The teacher had us shake little glass jars of milk all afternoon long explaining that if we were diligent the milk would thicken and we could then make little bread and butter sandwiches. Kept us quiet for about three hours, after which we laid our aching arms to rest under our little heads and took a long mid-summer nap. No real butter was known to have been made.
But, if you’d like to try making butter at home, here is a link to an article about how to do it. https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/42264/homemade-butter/
Now there are several kinds of butter available to us, some completely well-known, others not so much.
Salted/Unsalted: Salted butter contains added salt for flavor and preservation.Cultured: Made from cream that has been fermented with bacterial cultures. It has a very tangy pleasant flavor.
Ghee/Clarified: Butterfat that has been heated to remove all water and milk solids. A specialty of Indian cooking.
European-Style: Higher fat content (82-84%) and churned longer for a creamier texture. The butter of Normandy is among the finest.
In addition to eating butter straight off, it is incredibly useful in cooking. Butter is a good choice for using in the sauté pan, but be careful. Butter has a very low smoke point. Butter is actually a suspension of milk solids in a liquid butterfat phase. Those milk solids burn very easily and can ruin a sauce in seconds flat. Many cooks like to mix butter with olive oil to get the benefit of the buttery flavor with the higher smoke point of the olive oil. In all cases however, do not use more than moderate heat.
However there may be times you want to let the butter go brown in the skillet. Heat it carefully just to the point that it turns brown, then remove it from the heat and use in the recipe immediately. One famous recipe is a browned butter and sage sauce for fish.
One way around the burning butter conundrum is to make clarified butter yourself.
Simply melt a couple sticks of cut up butter in a sauce pan over very low heat. When melted there will be a foam on top, which you remove; there will be milk solids on the bottom which you want to eliminate; and there will be beautiful clear liquid butter in the middle which is what you are going for. Since the clarified butter has none of those micro flash points made by the milk solids, the smoke point goes from 350° up to 450°, a significant advantage.
One easy way to use clarified butter is to go shopping at an Indian grocery store and pick up a carton of “ghee”, which is actually clarified butter. In its solid state it looks like regular butter, but when melted it is totally clear.
Butter is a common ingredient in making flour-based doughs. As it melts it creates little holes that are responsible for the texture of the bread or crust. The trick here is to chill your butter and never let it get hot, if you can avoid it.
One good trick is to take a stick of frozen butter and grate it using a box grater. This makes it infinitely easier to incorporate into your dough without getting it warmed up.
If you like to pan fry your steak or chops, butter can come in very handy. Slip some into the skillet along with your preferred herbs and spices, let it melt and then baste the meat. The added flavor is noticeable and it can make a home cooked meal taste positively restaurant-quality.
Speaking of butter and herbs, have you heard of compound butter? This is just a quick and easy blend of soft butter and finely chopped herbs and spices. You mix them together and then let them set in a mold of some kind, chill it and you get a stick of colorful compound butter. Just cut off a slice or two to melt on your steak, and you’ve added another layer of flavor to your dish.
Finally, we can’t talk about butter and cooking without mentioning its use in sauces. Chefs refer to mounting a sauce with butter. This is done at the end of the process, just before serving. You slip in a pat or two of cold butter into your sauce or soup, and stir it in letting it melt. The result is an improved taste, a creamier texture, and a glossier finish. Magic.
Here is a great cooking idea Jerry has sent along.
Beurre Blanc
Ingredients
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
4 shallots, chopped (skin and pink layer removed)
½ cup Champagne vinegar (for Beurre Rouge, substitute red wine vinegar)
1 cup dry white wine (for Beurre Rouge, substitute red wine)
1 lb butter, cut into cubes and kept cold until use
In a saucepan over med-high heat all of the ingredients until they come to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until all of the liquid has evaporated but not caramelizing on the bottom of the pan. Stir in the cold butter one piece at a time over low heat until all has been incorporated. Strain the sauce of the solids and keep warm until use.
