Hey, you remember the 80s and 90s when low-fat everything was cool? If you're still wishing for those days, you reading the wrong blog. But if you're ready to get down with some delicious, melty, salty fat - keep reading.
The word 'butter' can be traced back to greek and latin, and it loosely means 'cow cheese'. The first butter ever made, around 10,000-8,500 K BC was actually made from non-cow's milk. In fact, it was a total accident. Legend has it that a herder in ancient Africa had a container (read: sheep stomach or something along those lines) sloshing away with milk in it. When the traveler arrived at their destination, they found the milk had curdled into delicious little morsels. I salute this person, for not only tasting the chunks but also telling their friends about it. Does that still happen today outside of children yelling 'COME LOOK WHAT I MADE!' to the horror of their parents? Hmm.
The first written record of how to make butter was found on a limestone tablet, about 4,500 years old. Between the modern and ancient ways to make butter, the one I found most interesting is what remote villagers in Africa still do to this day: as I understand it, they essentially are making a jostling structure out of sticks, rope, and a slosh sack. Hats off to that ingenuity.
Generally speaking, butter is made by churning a milk until it separates into butter fat and butter milk. This may sound hard, but it can be deceptively easy. If you've ever watched a baking or cooking competition, chances are you've seen a contestant freak out when they whipped dairy too much and it became butter. In the end, butter is actually around 80% fat, and the remaining 20% is a mix of milk and water. When you brown butter, the part that browns is actually the milk. For the record, both butter milk and butter fat can be used for cooking/baking.
Depending on how you want to make your food or where you grew up in the world, you might be used to different types of butter. Here's a short list:
Ghee or clarified butter -> this means the milk and water have been removed, leaving only the butter fat. Apparently this has a higher burning point and therefore it's great for frying.
Cultured butter -> Made from different cream, giving it a more complex flavor.
European style butter -> Churned at a slower rate and has a few more % of fat.
Whipped butter -> This leverages nitrogen gas which makes it more spreadable.
What if you don't like the butter you got? Perhaps you could take after a student who staged a rebellion at Harvard University in 1766 when the butter served was not to his liking. The passion was real. If you want to try different types of butter, go ahead and travel to places like France, where butter will seep out of your pores after eating. Or Tibet where yak's milk butter is in, or African nations where butter is made from sour milk (traditionally). The list is endless, and very delicious. If you want to try out different ways to store your butter, you could check out the Irish. There are so many reasons to love the Irish, but one more is that they used to store their butter in bogs. Bogs are wicked interesting natural wetlands which have preservative qualities, and butter was one such thing preserved. While butter is eaten universally, before refrigerators butter was easier to store in colder climates. Warmer climate didn't stop India from being the number one butter producer (1.5 Million metric tons) in the world in 1997, followed by the US (522,000 metric tons) and France (466,000 metric tons). The US didn't like butter as much after WW 1&2 due to rationing, when vegetable oil based margarine was easier to access (ew). Fortunately, Americans have since come to their senses.
....With the one exception of if you spent time or grew up in the US in the 80s and 90s. During that time you probably were subjected to endless marketing and media around low fat or no fat being cool and good fro you. This is my biggest bone to pick with ye olde marketinge ofe foode productse. I was so terrified of being fat, I didn't eat butter until I was well into therapy. Well thank god I can work on ignoring all that BS now! To be fair, throughout
history, just like with the 'nasty garlic eaters', 'butter eaters' were targeted at one point,
too. My opinion? Eat the damn butter AND take care of yourself. They are not mutually exclusive. So you know what? It's time for recipes.
First, thank you Damn Delicious for her recipe on steak. I made my first steak ever, successfully, thanks to her guidance. Please click through to her recipe page, but if you're in a pinch - get some steak nicely cooked and slap some delicious compound herb butter on top. I used butter mixed with salt, pepper, basil, thyme, rosemary, fresh garlic and lemon rind in my tt vid.
Second, I made boiled (sorry, I said steamed in the video) cauliflower with browned butter. Wicked easy and delish.
Take the cauliflower, chop it up and boil it for 5 minutes.
Take some butter - maybe 4-6 tablespoons - and brown it in a pan on medium heat. First the butter will foam, then it will brown. It goes relatively quickly (a couple minutes), so I recommend watching it once it has fully melted.
Pour browned butter over cauliflower and add a pinch of salt to taste.
Third, I made a warm salad with butter lemon sauce.
Peel and chop up one medium sweet potato and sauté over medium heat until fork tender. Watch out not to burn it like I did.
Slice half a yellow onion and sauté until soft over low to medium heat for 5-10 minutes, depending on the heat and your personal preference. The onion should be soft.
Lightly toast 1/2 cup of pecans and chop them up.
Add 1, 2, and 3 to a pre-washed bag of mixed greens.
For the sauce, I eyeballed this: half a stick of butter melted in the microwave + half the juice of a lemon + 1 TBSP of honey. Add salt to taste.
Pour over salad and mix, then serve.
This meal was SO GOOD and I was pleasantly surprised by the different textures, sweet and salty flavor, and how filling it was. The butter adds a layer of comfort without being overpowering. Good luck, muah!
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