Monday, November 21, 2011

Preparing for Thanksgiving - Compound Butter

Thanksgiving is this week! I love this time of year. Wonderful food, smells, family time, decorations.... It's simply my favorite time of year. The best part about my life around Thanksgiving is that I have a husband who loves to cook almost as much as I do and he helps out a bunch. One of the things he asked me to make this year is a compound butter. This is a great way to add buttery goodness to a dish as well as amazing flavor. This year we wanted to infuse the great flavors of Rosemary, Thyme, Parsley, and Sage into our turkey. We have already tried it and it was marvelous. (Stay tuned for some turkey tips)

For this dish we will need:

Herbs whatever kind you want fresh is the best
Butter

Really, that's it. Specifically for what I did, I used about 2 TBS a piece of the herbs chopped up and 2 sticks of butter. In retrospect we could have done half of that, but we like it enough that we will use the rest of it later, and it keeps in the fridge for quite a while.




Soften your butter thoroughly. It should be easily spreadable. If you are softening it in the microwave, only use increments of 5 seconds, you will have to run the microwave about 5 times but it's better to be safe than sorry. When butter melts, it's physical properties change and it won't set back up properly. 



These are the fantastic herbs that we used. (from the left: Thyme, Rosemary, Sage, Parsley) 



Pluck the leaves off of the stems and chop them up finely. (Tip: I chopped them up more than this picture shows, but I still should have chopped them more, it's not fun to get a big piece of an herb in your bite of turkey)



Mix the butter and the herbs together. I did this by hand, but you can use a mixer. (You can see how big some of my herb pieces are still)




Scoop your butter onto some plastic wrap and make it a log form. This allows you to cut off nice uniform pieces if you are using it for something like a steak. (It is really yummy to put a slice of compound butter on top of a hot steak. Then you get melty, buttery, flavorful goodness.)


I should point out that I made this a few days early. From what I have found, you can keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks and in the freezer for a couple of months. If you freeze it you will want to do more than a single wrapping of plastic wrap (stick in a freezer bag, or wrap over the plastic with foil). Of course, this all also depends on the things you put in your butter, if it is a quickly perishable item, it may not last as long.



(sorry about the yellowiness of this picture.... our house has poor lighting at night)

To use this butter in with our turkey, we rubbed the entire outside down with it, and stuffed some under the skin (part of the trick to a moist turkey). Lyle is usually the one who cooks the turkey and this butter definitely made this one the best yet!


Turkey Tips:
  • If you want a moist turkey, don't cook your stuffing in it. Everything that I have seen or read says that will just dry your turkey out. Make your stuffing separately. 
  • If you want a really, really moist turkey. Cut up some oranges and stuff them in the turkey. They release steam and juices during the cooking process which help the turkey stay moist, without really flavoring the turkey like orange. Also, stick other things like onions, garlic, and whatever other herbs/flavorings you want to use, inside of it. 
  • USE A MEAT THERMOMETER! Carryover cooking is a real thing, and if you cook the turkey till it is "Completely cooked" it will probably be overcooked by the time you serve it, which could lead to a dry turkey. According to Alton Brown (from food network) cook it until the temperature hits 161 degrees F. Then cover it with foil and let it sit for 15 minutes. This will allow the turkey to finish cooking while not over cooking it and drying your bird out.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! 





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