I have been collecting butter dished for a few years. Most of my butter dishes are personal serving size. I don't yet own a traditional, rectangular butter dish, but there are a few that I have my eye on.
I use my butter bell the most. I have a mini that I keep near my stove.
The New Food Lover's Companion
Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst
2013
I love this reference guide. I refer to it any time I read about a food or technique that I am not familiar with. Such as, I was looking at a recipe that asked for "roquette." Thanks to my Food Lover's Companion I now know that roquette is arugula.
The New Food Lover's Companion includes more than 7,200 A-to-Z entries describing food of every kind, cooking techniques, herbs, spices, wines and other ingredients. The book includes hundreds of cooking tips plus an extensive bibliography of recommended cookbooks.
There is also The Deluxe Food Lover's Companion. This enlarged and enhanced reference volume has detailed glossaries and hundreds of illustrations.
You can use traditional butter molds or anything that will create a shape you like. I am using a candy mold in this lesson.
1. What you will need: Room temperature butter, a knife, plastic wrap, a mold.
3. When you have filled all of the mold shapes, make butter flush with base of mold by using the back of the knife (or a pastry scraper or spatula)
2. Spread the butter into the mold. Pushing down to remove any air bubbles.
4. Cover with plastic wrap. and place in the freezer.
5. When hardened, remove from freezer and pop out butter from mold or tap mold on table. If butter doesn't come out easily, rinse under warm water.
6. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.
Restaurant: Recognized with three Michelin Stars and a coveted four stars from the San Francisco Chronicle, Quince restaurant serves exceptional Italian and French-inspired, locally-sourced Northern California cuisine. Quince is located in a historic 1907 brick building in San Francisco’s downtown Jackson Square neighborhood. Next door, Quince’s sister restaurant, Cotogna (meaning “Quince” in Italian) serves rustic Italian trattoria cuisine in a comfortably stylish setting.
Chef: As executive chef and owner of Quince and Cotogna restaurants, Michael Tusk is known for his approach to both Italian and French regional cuisine.
While studying Art History at Tulane University, he took his first cooking job and was immediately drawn to the industry. He enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America and began his journey in the culinary industry. Chef Tusk worked in restaurants throughout France, Italy, and in the Bay Area before opening Quince with his wife Lindsay. In 2011, Tusk was honored with the James Beard Award for “Best Chef Pacific.”
Butter: The Quince pastry department makes the butter in-house with buffalo milk and crème fraîche. They culture, split, press, and season it with fleur de sel. They form the butter into quenelles and sprinkle with marigold petals.
Commentary: Chef Tusk loves butter, especially Bordier butter from France. “I particularly like the seaweed butter. I like to sneak some back to the United States whenever I can. Also, I have some friends from Paris that will bring me some when they visit.” He admits.
Chef Tusk shared a few of his favorite ways to enjoy butter:
“I like to go to a restaurant and have a simple piece of fish with a beautiful beurre blanc. You don’t see it as often, but I think it’s pretty delicious.”
“A great egg pasta with beautiful butter and shaved white truffles is one of those dishes that I could eat every day if I had the option.“
“In the morning, having delicious toasted bread with butter and coffee is usually enough for me, that gets my day going.”
“There is nothing like the nutty smell of nice brown butter with a little shot of lemon. It is pretty versatile. That is something that I will never get tired of serving.
Quince
470 Pacific Ave, San Francisco, California 94133
(415) 775-8500
Snapchat from Vienna
Butter Journal's favorite intern, Vienna, is always thinking about butter, even when she's not at work.
Thanks to my friend Felicia, I now have this unique butter notepad on my desk. I'm not sure I want to use it, I might keep it as decoration.
“This non-stick notepad—perfect for slathering brilliant ideas onto—makes a charming stocking stuffer and low-calorie gift.”
- Chronicle Books
1. You'll need: Butter paddles, stick of butter cut into 1/2 inch cubes (keep refrigerated until ready to roll), bowl of ice water.
2. Place butter paddles in ice water until cold. Butter needs to be right out of the refrigerator.
3. Roll cube between paddles, moving in an opposite, circular direction. Drop finished ball into ice water.
4. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.
A quenelle, pronounce kuh-NEHL, traditionally is a delicate dumpling made of seasoned ground meat or vegetables that are gently poached in stock. This oval shape has become very popular for other items, such as butter, potatoes or dessert.
There are a few methods for achieving the oval shaped quenelle. Below are directions for a one- and a two-spoon quenelle.
Photos by Scott Phillips
To create a quenelle, you’ll need two spoons of the same size. The size of the spoon will determine the size of your quenelle.
With a spoon in each hand, scoop a generous amount of mousse into one spoon. Gently press the bowl of the second spoon against the mousse, scooping the contents from the first spoon into the second. Transfer the mousse back to the first spoon in the same manner. This begins to create a smooth, rounded surface where the mousse molded to the spoon. Keep scooping back and forth until you have a nice, smooth oval shape.
- Article by Melissa Pellegrino, December 2009, Fine Cooking Magazine, ©2009 by The Taunton Press Inc. www.finecooking.com
Rocher video courtesy of ChefSteps.
A rocher, or one-handed quenelle, is a way to give a beautiful oval shape to butter. Chefs are taught to make a quenelle with two spoons, and that can work well, but by design it creates three curving sides to the shape. For smooth foods, such as butter, a one-handed quenelle is faster and yields a shape with no apparent edges.
A perfect rocher is simple in theory, but it's challenging in practice. The butter must be at room temperature, or a little firmer, so the rocher will form and hold its shape. The food should be uniform, without large voids of trapped air, which would show up as craters in the rocher. The spoon needs to be deep-bowled rather than flat (look for good ones at a thrift store or antique shop). And the spoon must be hot enough to release the rocher, but not so hot that it melts the food. If necessary, warm the bottom of the spoon with your hand to help release the rocher. A rocher will work with any smooth food, such as, ice cream, mashed potatoes, or ganache.
The technique takes practice, but if you spend the time, your dishes will reflect the effort. A rocher makes the simplest of components appear elegant and light.
ChefSteps offers a variety of videos that will inspire and educate cooks at any skill level, visit their website here
This aromatic butter is a classic sauce for gnocchi and squash ravioli. Don’t be afraid to use whole sage leaves here—when they hit the hot butter, they become crisp like chips and their flavor mellows considerably.
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, diced
¼ cup sage leaves
½ teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
Generous pinch of freshly ground black pepper
Heat a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat until very hot. Add the butter and cook, stirring constantly, for 4 to 5 minutes, or until browned. Remove pan from the heat; add the sage, salt, and pepper; and stir until the bubbling subsides. Serve the butter warm.
This butter keeps for several days tightly sealed in the refrigerator or several weeks in the freezer.
Printed with permission from
Flavored Butters
How to Make Them, Shape Them, and Use Them As Spreads, Toppings, and Sauces
By Lucy Vaserfirer
Unsalted Butter (often called Sweet Butter) is butter made without salt. Many cooks like to use unsalted butter in baking or cooking to control the total amount of salt in the recipe. Sweet butter spoils faster than salted butter but many think it has a fresh flavor that enhances both cooking and baking.
Salted Butter is butter made with added salt. Salt acts as a preserve and extends the butter’s shelf life. Salt also enhances flavor. It is a matter of preference whether you choose salted or unsalted butter. The salt content varies slightly from one manufacturer to the next, but they generally add about ¼ teaspoon of salt per 1 stick (¼ lb) of butter.
Sweet Cream Butter vs. Sweet Butter can be a confusing distinction. Most of the commercially produced butter in the US is sweet cream butter (produced from fresh sweet cream), as opposed to butter made from cultured or soured cream. Sweet cream butter comes in salted and unsalted varieties. Cookbooks and food writers often use the term Sweet Butter to describe unsalted butter, even though most sticks of “Sweet Cream Butter” are salted butter! It pays to read the label closely if you are trying to reduce or control salt in recipes since “sweet cream butter” could apply to any butter made from sweet cream.
European-Style Butter is butter with a higher butter fat content: 82 to 86 percent compared to the typical American or Canadian butter with its average of 81 percent butter fat. European-style butter has less moisture and therefore produces flakier pastries and fluffier cakes. European-style butter can be used for all cooking and baking tasks, although some bakers use less than the recipe requests due to the product’s high fat content. European-style butter also has a tangier flavor than lower-fat sweet cream butter.
Cultured Butter is traditionally made from fermented cream. Nowadays, dairies make much of the commercial cultured butter by incorporating live bacterial cultures and lactic acid. European–style butter is often made from cultured butter.
Ghee is a class of clarified butter that originated in South Asia. The cook heats the butter until all the water evaporates. The milk solids are left and allow to brown. This browning carmelizes the milk solids and creates a nutty flavor. This method creates a higher smoke point and a longer shelf life. Ghee is practical for sautéing and frying.
Clarified Butter is butter in which the cook boils off all of the water and spoons off the milk solids to create a clear amber-colored liquid. Clarified butter has a higher smoking point than regular butter, making it useful for high-heat cooking such as sautéing and frying.
Drawn Butter, depending on whom you ask, could be the same as Clarified Butter. Those that consider them to be different define Drawn Butter as melted butter with the water evaporated but the milk solids remaining. Drawn butter is usually used as a rich sauce for dipping lobster chunks or artichoke leaves.
Whipped Butter is regular butter with nitrogen gas whipped into it. This process creates a higher-volume, lighter butter that is easier to spread at colder temperatures. Producers prefer nitrogen as the additive over air. Air can encourage oxidation and rancidity. Whipped butter is seldom recommended for cooking or baking because it has a lower density relative to regular butter, not enough fat solid.
Spreadable Butter is a blend of regular butter and vegetable oil (often canola). This combination is easy to spread when cold and has a buttery flavor. Like whipped butter, spreadable butter is not recommended for cooking and baking.
Light Butter is traditional butter with added water, air and sometimes other fillers. As it’s name suggests, light butter is lower in calories because it contains about 25 percent less butterfat. Once again, light butter is not recommended for cooking or baking.
Organic Butter comes from cows whose feed (and therefore milk) contains no antibiotics or growth hormones. To qualify for this USDA designation, the dairy cows also must eat 100 percent organic feed grown without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.
Whey Butter is made from the liquid whey drained from cheese curds. Whey butter has a stronger, cheesier flavor and often contains salt.
Raw Cream Butter is hard to find in the U.S. or Europe. Dairies use fresh or cultured unpasteurized cream to make this butter. You may never find this butter unless you own a cow or purchase raw whole cream and make the butter yourself.
Compound Butter (or flavored butter) is traditional butter mixed with ingredients. Cooks include almost any ingredient, but some of the more common selections are herbs, garlic, spices, and honey.
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