Salted Caramel Chive Butter Recipe (With Miso Variation)
I encountered this dish at Berlin’s Golvet, a Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant with a globetrotting pallet and edgy service. While most everything else on the menu boasts nouvelle cuisine’s inaccessibility of foams and slimes and beautiful bursts of long-extracted flavor, this starter was a perfect, simple beginning to a marathon meal. The flavor isn’t as sweet as you might expect––caramelized, suspended in butter, and well-salted, much of the sugar is broken down and the residual sweetness provides a fascinating undertone to the herbaceous allium bite of chives. The brilliance of this dish comes from the way that sugars, when caramelized, transform into a zillion flavor compounds, lending the signature nutty, toasted, acidic, and yes, buttery notes in a good caramel. Amazingly, caramel butter tastes even more like butter! This is the perfect way to elevate a beautiful, rustic loaf if you decide that butter alone isn’t quite enough of a thrill.
For the MISO VARIATION, I suggest using slightly less caramel and darkening the caramel as much as you can, to minimize sweetness. This way, the final butter is very versatile — try lightly sautéing a crunchy vegetable like bok choy or green beans in it!
Active time: 35 minutes
Inactive time: 75 minutes
Total time: 110 minutes
For the Salted Caramel
60 g / ¼ cup water
2 g / ½ teaspoon salt
120 g / ½ cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
110 g / ½ cup heavy cream
MISO VARIATION: 2 tablespoons white miso (shiro miso)
For the Butter
225 g / 2 American sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
30 g / 1 oz chives (large handful)
Small bowls or ramekins
Method
Combine the water, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan. Place over medium heat and whisk gently until syrup begins to boil.
Once mixture begins bubbling, stop stirring. Simmer mixture until sauce turns the color of honey, gently swirling occasionally to encourage even heating.
Optional: If the mixture sloshes higher on the sides of the pan, dip a pastry brush in water and paint the sides so the water pushes the overflow down.Watch carefully as the caramel approaches a deep amber color. As soon as you reach this color, remove the pan from heat and pour all the cream, stirring vigorously with a heat-resistant spatula or wooden spoon. Don’t worry if the caramel solidifies upon adding the cream –– just keep stirring and place the pan back on low heat.
Stir constantly over medium-low heat until foam subsides and caramel is silky. Then continue stirring until caramel registers 225°F / 107°C, about 3 minutes.
MISO VARIATION: let caramel cool slightly (180°F / 80°C) and then whisk in miso
Transfer to a heat resistant container and cool until just warm to the touch.
Beat room temperature butter in stand mixer (paddle attachment) or with hand mixer on low for 2-3 minutes until a bit fluffy.
Drizzle in 3-6 tablespoons of the caramel sauce while mixing on low according to your taste. Continue mixing just until combined, tasting regularly until you reach your desired sweetness.
Optional: start with half the butter and add caramel more liberally to see what ‘too much’ tastes like, then add the other half of the butter and triangulate.Scrape the caramel butter into ramekins or shallow bowls, filling up to or just over the brim and smoothing evenly with the lip. Place butter dishes into fridge for at least 30 minutes to set.
If you don’t have bowls the right size, simply put into a larger bowl and press the chives into the butter, then clean up sides of bowl with rubber spatula.Meanwhile, slice the chives as thinly as possible while preserving the ring shape. Arrange chives in a pile just wider than the butter dishes.
Remove butter dishes from fridge and press top of butter dish into chive pile, rotating dishes to ensure chives stick to butter.
Sprinkle more chives on top of butter dishes and let dishes come to room temperature.
Serve with crusty bread.
Optional: serve with a small bowl of wide-flake salt (i.e. Maldon) and another bowl containing leftover / extra sliced chives.
