Butter Ideas: Cultured Butter, Salted Caramel Miso Butter, and More
This is an accompaniment to a recent deep dive I took into a vat of butter. Read it here, and spend some time culturing and churning your own butter. If nothing more, it’ll make you appreciate the store-bought stuff!
For each recipe, after the butter splits, rinse the curds a few times and squeeze out as much water as possible prior to refrigerating. I like to strain the curds over a piece of cheese cloth, rinse under very cold water (often, I put an ice cube in the strainer as well), and then wring the cheese cloth gently. I then dab the butter with a paper towel before scraping into a ramekin and refrigerating under a tight layer of plastic wrap.
Yogurt-Cultured Butter
8 parts high-quality cream
1 part full-fat yogurt
Salt to taste
Sample ratio: 1 cup cream to 2 tablespoons yogurt.
Combine and let sit for 24 hours until cream thickens and smells pleasantly sour. Blend in a blender or mix with whisk attachment in stand mixer for 1-2 minutes, until the yellow curds separate from the whey. Follow above instructions for removing water.
Shio Koji-Cultured Butter
16 parts high-quality cream
1 part shio koji
Sample ratio: 1 cup cream to 1 tablespoon shio koji.
Combine and let sit for 24 hours until cream thickens and smells pleasantly sour. Blend in a blender or mix with whisk attachment in stand mixer for 1-2 minutes, until the yellow curds separate from the whey. Follow above instructions for removing water.
For Berlin readers, I highly recommend making a shio koji as described here using pre-made koji from https://mimiferments.com/. American readers, see notes on sourcing koji in the same link above.
Salted Caramel Miso Butter
This is admittedly not the easiest option — please read the full recipe here. Follow the miso variation described, whisking in 2 tablespoons white miso after the caramel is off the heat.
Compound Butters
One of my favorite dinner party tricks is to soften a big chunk of quality butter, and mash in a few other ingredients. Then, I roll it up in lightly greased parchment paper and let it solidify again in the fridge briefly. It’s a cheap and elegant starter served with good bread and crunchy vegetables.
The world’s your oyster (yes, you can do a seafood compound butter!) here so no specific rules, but here are a few of my favorites:
Lemon zest and mint
Grated garlic and parsley
Paprika and chili
