Compounded

Steaks are on the menu tonight and aside from a simple treatment of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper a compound butter is a great addition. Goggle has 1,730,000 hits for compound butter! That is a lot of butter being spread around.

Here is my recipe for the go to butter in our house. It is even good on backed potatoes.

-butter
-Dijon mustard
-Worcestershire sauce
-Tarragon


In my exacting measurements the amounts are basically as follows-
-a big dollop of mustard (probably a tablespoon)
-a splash or two of Worcestershire sauce (probably a 1/2 teaspoon or so)
-a good pinch of dried Tarragon (probably a teaspoon or so)

If you prefer it sweet go heavy on the Tarragon, if you prefer some bit go heavy (gently) on the Worcestershire sauce and I have found that the mustard amount tends to remain constant.

Assuming the butter is already soft, I mush the butter and the ingredients up in a bowl or cup with two spoons. I use the spoons because they are easier to push the butter back into the working cup then using a fork and having half the butter stick to the tines. The whole mush will look something disgusting like the photo below.



From here,depending upon how fancy you want to get, there are a few options. You can put the whole mess into a piece of wax paper and then roll it up like a hot dog. Wrap the tube with saran wrap and place into the freezer. Then prior to guests arriving you can cut it into little butter slices.

What I usually do is to put the whole mess into a zip lock bag and then use the bag to mush the stuff around some more. Once it is all mushed up I snip off the end of the bag (you could also get some icing tips and make fancy little butter swirls) and squeeze it into a small glass butter cup, smooth the top over and serve.


This is one of those posting that looks way better in person. I saved everyone the horror of seeing it squeezed out of the zip lock. As Google can attest to there are tremendous amount of variations of compound butter. Find one that works for you.