Holiday Compound Butters
The most common herbs used with butter are thyme, rosemary and sage. Making a compound butter for each will come incredibly handy when you're cooking up your favorite meals!
Ingredients
- 2 Cups Butter
- 1 tbsp Fresh thyme
- 1 tbsp Fresh rosemary
- 1 tbsp Fresh sage
Instructions
- Set out 2 cups (4 sticks) of butter to come up to room temperature. Butter can be left out for quite some time before going bad, so its fine to even leave it out over night. Don't microwave the butter to speed things up as that will melt the butter instead of softening it.
- Remove fresh thyme leaves from the stems. The stems are quite woody and so won't be pleasant if they end up in your butter. Remove the rosemary and the sage leaves from their stems as well.
- Keeping the herbs separate, roughly chop the rosemary and sage. The thyme leaves should be small enough that chopping isn't necessary.
- Once the butter is at room temperature, cut one stick into 4 or 5 squares and place in a bowl. Add in the thyme and use a rubber spatula to mix and fold together until it looks like the thyme is evenly distributed into the butter.
- Using the rubber spatula, remove all of the butter onto a large square of parchment or wax paper, or plastic wrap. Shape the butter slightly with your hands to resemble the beginning of a "log" shape, and then fold the paper or plastic wrap over. Twist the ends tightly close to the butter, and roll with your hands on the counter to smooth out the better and get the correct shape.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the rosemary and sage.
- Homemade herb butter can safely be used within 3-5 days if kept in the fridge, or up to 6 months if stored in the freezer.
