The Butter Bourguignon

8 Flavored Butter for Dinner

Imagine being in New York, getting into one of the sophisticated Manhattan Steakhouse and ordering a succulent Prime Rib. Probably the waiter would ask you if you want to add a Herb Butter flask, an aromatized butter that sits on the sizzling steak, it gradually melts and enriches the bite. The classic version with herbs and garlic is the traditional one, but there are a bunch of more or less gourmet varieties, in which the most varied ingredients are added to the butter. So, even if we have tried to make as our each component of that unforgettable steak, from choosing the raw material to the techniques with which it is cooked, adding butter is something that don’t belong to us. Today most of you will surely practice techniques such as Reverse Searing or other alternatives as well like Prefreezing but I’m convinced that almost no one add butter to the steak at the end of cooking.

I admit it, to me personally is an experience I like though I can easily understand how it is conceptually a bit far from many steak bites purists. Despite this, frankly I can not make a reason for how flavored butter has done so little success on Italian palates. If its canonical use is on the steak, it is as true that there are infinite other applications that make it perfect for our kind of kitchen too. I use it a lot for:

Not only the steaks but all the meat with a pronounced external cauterization, primarily the carrè or lamb ribs and some pork cuts, such as pork chops.
Crustaceans of all types and clearly first shrimp and prawns
Mollusks Like Mussels or Scallops
Some types of grilled vegetables that especially love the relationship with butter like cobs or potatoes (P.S. you have already read my recipes about it on Subito Barbecue?)
Of course all the kind of bread on the grill, first the croutons and the bruschette.

Realization is very easy, just add the ingredients to the butter left at room temperature until it is “cream” to work, mix and give the dough the characteristic cylindrical shape, wrapping it in oven paper or film and finally let it harden, putting it in the fridge if you need to eat it shortly, in freezer if you want to keep it. There are two ways to do this:

Flavoed Dough. The butter is homogenized with the other ingredients in a food processor or alternatively even by hand, distributed with a spoon on a sheet of oven paper that is rolled onto itself forming the cylinder. It is a practical and fast solution and then it is particularly effective during the flavor phase when it melts on hot meat.

Rolling Butter — Credits: recipeqtips.com

Flavor layers. The creamy butter is placed between two sheets of oven paper and lined with a rolling pin. After removing the top sheet, distribute the other ingredients on the butter and then roll the butter on itself by working on the underlying sheet until the cylinder is formed. Aesthetically this is a very pleasant solution because the slices of butter cut from the cylinder present inside a spin made with the flavoring ingredients.

I also love to put the butter in some small cups and have at least 6-8 kinds into the freezers so I can take them in the table at the same time to my guests, so they can try to accompany the same cut of meat with more flavorings, in a sort of Butter Bourguignon but also the cylinder-shaped classic works well so that from time to time I can choose the variant that best suits what I have cooked, cutting just the amount I need.

Below you will find my 8 favorite variants, where the ingredients has to be taken in equal parts but can be rebalanced to your liking. In the same way, I usually do not add salt and pepper, without knowing in advance how much the meat is flavored but of course you are free to correct it at your own pleasure. I hope they can inspire you: