Compound Butter

Does your herb garden look like this, mostly frozen but with a few signs of life? I cut my basil long ago and made pesto — basil is tender and would not hold up through even a light freeze — but other herbs I let go.

The oregano in the front right corner of the photo is frozen, but next to it are hardier thyme and sage plants that are poking up through the snow, as well as some rosemary sprigs in a round pot behind them. The surprise for me was the mound of chives in the back right of the photo, looking like a bright green mop head, or a strangely-colored Hungarian Puli dog.

So what to do? I only grow enough herbs to season our food through the summer and fall — Penzeys keeps my shelves stocked with high quality dried herbs — but in the end I felt a pang of guilt. What could I do to use up those bits and pieces? Why, of course! Butter is the answer to every culinary conundrum! So off I went out into the freezing rain in my pajamas (making a fashion statement with my Renoir umbrella) to harvest the last of my herbs.

Todd heard our dog Gracie whining, came downstairs to investigate, and snapped this photo of me. Good grief! I hadn’t even brushed my teeth yet! I used scissors to snip the remaining green and collected it all in a salad bowl.

Back in the kitchen, I spread the herbs out, patted them with a paper towel (“nice herbs”), and left them to finish drying while I ate my farm-fresh egg for breakfast and enjoyed a strong cup of Yorkshire Gold tea. Ahhh!

Now, onto making compound butter. That’s what it’s called in chef-speak when you mix seasonings into butter. I decided to make two kinds — chive butter, and sage-rosemary-thyme butter. (No parsley, apologies to Simon and Garfunkel. I planted some in the spring, but it weirdly never grew more than an inch or two high.) I chopped the herbs up with my chef’s knife and surveyed my meager harvest. (By the way, if you don’t have a near-frozen herb garden, you may have some not-so-fresh herbs languishing in a little plastic box in your refrigerator. Get ’em out and chop ’em up!)

I figured I had enough chives for two sticks of softened butter, and enough of the herb mix for one stick. (I’d say about 1/4 cup chopped herbs per stick of butter is about right.) I used my Kitchenaid mixer with the paddle attachment to mix everything together, then I plopped spoonfuls of the butter mixtures onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. (I only needed a quarter-sheet pan for this wee job.) Into the freezer for a couple of hours, then into labeled zip bags.

I can extract a blob of herb butter anytime, to season sautéed vegetables, yummy up baked potatoes, luxuriate atop a steak warm from the grill, or coat pasta. It’s also perfect for basting a chicken or turkey. Loosen the skin, rub the compound butter underneath, and the flavors will infuse the bird while it’s roasting. Todd and I are going to a friend’s house for supper on Sunday, and we’re charged with bringing garlic bread. I’ll be making herbed garlic bread, of course!

Come to think of it, I should have put garlic in the mixed-herb compound butter. (I’d put it through a garlic press or make a paste of it by mushing it with kosher salt to avoid crunchy bits of raw garlic.) Lemon zest would be a nice addition, too. You can put anything in butter. Well, maybe not gummy bears, but I had to think long and hard to come up with a “not.”

Here are photos of my bowl of herbs and my freezer-ready bags of compound butter portions, as well as a shot of one of my pesto blobs melting into some Booty Farm organic tomatoes. Pasta heaven!