Butter Bliss 🧈

Build Back Butter!

Greetings Friends, 🥂

Julia Child once, famously, said “With enough butter, anything is good.”

The Irish poet Seamus Heaney called butter 🧈 “coagulated sunlight…heaped up like gilded gravel in the bowl.”

And while cuisines all over the globe use butter it has become iconically tied to French 🇫🇷 Cuisine. In the movie No Reservations, Katherine Zeta-Jones’ character, when asked what the 3 secrets of French cooking are… “butter, butter… and more butter”.

So, what’s so magical and blissful about this culinary kitchen staple?

Butter is truly versatile. It holds essential places in Savory Cooking, Pastry Production, as well as Baking & Dough Making. Butter has also survived multiple attacks from “Health Scientists” which taught an entire generation that “butter is bad for you and causes coronary artery disease (Remember the whole Margarine Craze? 🤡 ). Thankfully many of those blanket myths have been debunked and butter remains vital for many recipes and cuisines… and for good reason! 🙌 😋

What is Butter?

Butter is essentially cream that has been over-whipped… really 😂

There’s much more to it than that, but if you’ve ever been making whipped cream at home and ended up with chunks of solids in the whipped cream, it’s because you over-agitated. The fat from the cream began separating, clumping and while that means you are on your way to making butter, it’s not ideal for whipped cream which should be completely smooth.

(*Many of my former cooks have likely been traumatized as I used to make them re-start any whipped cream that didn’t hold a perfectly glossy, pillowy texture. NO GRAINY TEXTURES ALLOWED. Trust me, it makes a huge difference. To this day I prefer to whip cream by hand, as it’s easy to go over in a machine within just a few seconds.)

Back to butter…

If we have a brief and basic understanding of what comprises butter, we can understand “how” and “why” it behaves the way it does in different kitchen recipes and techniques.

Butter Composition

The structure of butter:

80% milk fat

15% water

5% solids (other than fats)

Special Properties

Butter fat stays solid, and emulsified, at room temperature. This is in contrast to olive oils and other vegetable oils which are liquids at room temperature.

This unique melting behavior of the milk fat causes butter to soften and becomes spreadable around 60F/15C, but doesn’t begin to melt until 85F/30C.

This carries important implications on how butter can be used in cooking and baking, which we will cover later.

Culinary Uses for Butter

This is by no means an complete list of culinary uses for butter but rather a highlight of some classics. This will give you a great idea of just how versatile butter is in the kitchen.

Sauces

Hollandaise… Bearnaise… just two savory sauces that require butter; traditionally clarified. (Note: clarified butter has been heated until foaming and then the fast is removed leaving all the solids behind). The warm butter is whisked into a base of eggs and acids and cooked slowly… make a luxurious and heavenly sauce.

Buerre Blanc

This sauce is used a lot on seafood. White wine, shallots and reduced down, then cream is added, followed by chunks of room temperature butter that are whisked in rapidly making a smooth and creamy sauce that is rich but still somewhat light on the palate.

Buerre Noisette/Buerre Noir

You’ve heard of browned butter? The browning of butter creates a TON of roasty, nutty and delicious flavors. Browned butter can be used as a base for pan sauces (like lemon caper) or even used in cake batters to add depth of flavor.

Buerre noisette (trans: hazel butter) is when the butter is heated and the solids turn light golden. Buerre noir (trans: black butter) is when the solids go a dark brown (but not black, because the butter will have an acrid, bitter and unpleasant taste).

Basting

Basting is an essential technique, in my opinion. Dousing fat over a protein or vegetable while cooking is a great way to keep things juicy… but also develop great flavor.

When basting with butter… add towards the end of cooking, make sure your pan is not screaming hot or your butter will turn black and acrid… no bueno!

Dr. Chef BowTiedOctopod | Soufflé Chad @BowTiedOctopod

Imagine not cooking with butter 🧈 🤡 🌍

I’ve also done a Twitter thread 🧵 on Cooking the Perfect Steak that gives you step by step advice.

Poaching

The process of submerging food in fat and slowly cooking at certain temps (depending on item) creates a luxurious and delicious texture. This can be done with clarified butter or butter that has been emulsified with a little water to create a homogeneous sauce (French call it Buerre Monté)

Ganache 🍫 🥛

Traditionally chocolate ganache is made 1:1 ratio of chocolate to cream. You can enrich a ganache by adding butter (which is basically concentrated cream 😂), or you can make chocolate:butter ganache that is extremely decadent.

Baking

One of the foundational baking techniques is learning to Cream butter and sugar for all sorts of cookie doughs, cakes, batters and more. Will probably do a whole substack on this 📝

Buttercream & Frostings

Of all cake frostings, buttercream may be the most famous. It should be light, smooth yet decadent and delicious. The process of whipping the butter and keeping it emulsified when other ingredients are added is how the magic happens.

Laminated Doughs 🥐

This is a fascinating, and one of my favorite, butter techniques.

Heard of Croissant? Kouign-amann? Palmiers (aka🐘 Ears)? Mille Feuille? Puff pastry?

All made through the technique of Lamination.

A block of butter is smashed, rolled and folded many times (at specific temps) to create many layers of butter of dough. When the dough is baked, the butter melts, the water in the butter releases steam which causes the pastry to puff or rise creating a light, airy and delicious creation. 🙌 It’s truly a Butter-Magic thing 🪄 🧈

Enriched Doughs 🍞

These are a category of bread dough that all contain butter as a major component. This produces a soft, rich and decadent dough hence the name “enriched”.
Brioche and Challah breads would be the most common but there are more as well. In fact, one of my favorite desserts “Baba au Rhum” is made from an enriched dough <Drooling now>

Pie Crusts 🥧

Can’t talk about butter and desserts without talking pie crusts. These can be sweet or savory. Pâte Brisée 🇫🇷 or Short Crust 🇬🇧 can be terms used as well. When we talked about lamination dough making long thin layers; this dough is different. Instead of laminating, the butter is “cut” into the flour mixto create a soft and tender crumb that is still flaky.

Rainbow of Flavors 🌈 

Butter itself makes a great canvas to layer flavors into. A common addition to the beurre blanc (white wine butter sauce 🇫🇷 ) above is roe or caviar right before serving. Fresh herbs also work well… in fact there’s a rainbow of possibilities.

But what about butter itself?

On it’s own… creamy, luscious and sweet when softened. When heated? That’s when some magic happens. Those milk solids begin take on color (a reaction called Maillard) which produces flavors like almond, hazelnut, toasted yeast and fresh baked bread.

Making Your Own

So you want to make your own? Good! 🙌

The next Substack will be a complete tutorial on:

Buying Butter

We go over the types and styles of butter. European vs American… salted? no salt? what’s cultured? We’ll go over it all

Homemade Butter

We will go start to finish from cream, to butter so you can easily make the tasty and delicious butter at home. You can also customize your own butter to your preferences (I’m kinda OCD/Control Freak on my food so this appeals to me 😂 )

Compound Butter

No you’ve got butter… let’s spice it up. You’re probably familiar with Mâitre d'Hôtel Butter 🧈 which is a butter infused with salt, pepper, lemon and parsley. This is commonly used to put on steaks to melt over and add flavor.

And then, I’m going to share a compound butter that’s infused with one of my favorite vegetables ever… you will want to put this on everything… trust me 🙌

So that wraps up our intro to butter… we didn’t get to ghee and some other preps but we have time. Be ready for the Next Substack and Subscribe now! 🥂