From butter boards to tempering, here are 5 tips to know when cooking with butter

Quick, how do you describe a Chardonnay? Or a perfect piece of salmon sashimi? Or a creamy dessert?

Did you say buttery? Everything from wine to fabric, when it’s sumptuous and wonderful, is likely to be compared to butter.

Butter, though, has certainly had its ups and downs. Remember when it was evil and we were supposed to spray a yellow chemical like "I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter" on our baked potatoes? Or bake with some plastic concoction called margarine? Hopefully, the pendulum has swung (for good) back to eating real food because I can’t imagine life without butter.

I’m just back from a New Year’s trip to Norway with my husband where we launched each day with a hearty breakfast buffet, the better to prepare ourselves for the (literal) Arctic well below zero temperatures. The star attraction for me at those laden tables? The big, creamy, spun gold bowl of smør (butter!) just waiting to be slathered on warm, fresh bread.

Honestly, what’s more satisfying? One of my oldest food memories is cinnamon toast coming out of the oven where my mom made it in batches because we’d devour so many slices, all melted butter and golden-crisp bread, the cinnamon and sugar melded in a crunchy-sweet brown crust. There’s just something primal about it.

But there’s a world beyond just buttering your bread! It was a revelation recently when I saw chef Alison Settle braise radishes in a couple of sticks of butter, and, maybe a little belatedly, I just got on the butter board bandwagon with a recent dinner party at my house and watched that disappear before any of the other snacky bits I’d set out.

What else can we do with butter? I talked with bar Vetti chef Andrew McCabe for some pro tips. McCabe worked at a French restaurant in Chicago (where they made their butter, the best he’s ever had, he says), as well as at Le Relais in Louisville in his early years, and we know just how synonymous butter is with French cuisine.

Even though McCabe is now immersed in the world of Italian fare at bar Vetti, 727 E Market St., that’s not strictly relegated to olive oil, he explained. When you get to a certain point in the country, he said, olive trees give way to cows, and they cook with butter.

What is it about butter, I asked, a rhetorical question of ever there was one.

“It's a fat so ... it's luxurious, rich, you know, delicious,” he says.

But he prizes butter for its versatility, adding to savory dishes and sweets alike. Here are some ways to bring more joy into your life with butter.

Make compound butter

If butter is good solo, it’s next level when you introduce other flavors. At bar Vetti, compound butter — butter mixed with anything from truffles to herbs to spicy seasonings — is used to impart flavor, finish sauces, or just top dishes like their broccolini with what he calls diavola butter. It can be made ahead of time and frozen into pucks to be ready on demand, he says.

If you have butter and a food processor you can whip up your own and use it to top steaks, add to pasta, or hey, eat with a fork if you want.

Poach fish in brown or clarified butter

“We use a ton of brown butter,” McCabe says, “just cooking it until the water evaporates and those milk solids are caramelized and get that nutty flavor.”

The richness lends itself to fall and winter dishes, he says, while the rest of the year they may use clarified butter. For that, “you're removing that water again,” he says, “but cooking it at a temperature to where the milk solids don't caramelize.”

It’s cleaner tasting, he says (like the essence of butter, I imagine it as). Either way, poaching fish in the butter versus, say, a lighter stock, is adding that next level of flavor.

Cook root veggies in butter

I mentioned the butter-braised radishes to McCabe, and he was right on board. You can give baby carrots the same treatment, he said. Other root veggies (I’m picturing sweet potatoes!) would also work well swimming in butter.

“You can just put them in some clarified butter, get a little higher smoke point, maybe you can get a little char on them,” he says. “And then you can add some orange juice and then make sure the temperature is coming down — you don't want to add butter to a hot hot pan. If you had tempered butter [that’s brought to room temp] just kind of work that into the sauce.”

Temper your butter

Don’t you hate when you try to smear a rock-hard lump of cold-from-the-fridge butter on your bread? That’s where tempering — or letting it come to room temperature — comes in, McCabe explains. And not just for the joy of gliding your knife through that smoothness. Tempered butter “incorporates a lot faster and a lot easier,” McCabe says. “It doesn't shock the sauce as much so it doesn't seize up.”

Make a butter board

Yes, this trend probably already came and went, but that’s no reason to miss out on the bliss of, yes, a board full of butter. Think cheese or charcuterie board, but just: butter! The one I made was inspired by a reel I saw on Instagram around Christmas so it had a red and green vibe.

Using a whipped truffle butter I found at the grocery, I let it come to room temperature, as artfully as I could smear it on a small wooden cutting board, then showered it with pomegranate seeds, fresh rosemary sprigs, sea salt, and cracked pepper, then served it with pita bread from MeeshMeesh Mediterranean, 636 E. Market St. (pro tip: they sell it to take home!). It was as delicious as it was pretty, and really, what more can you ask?

Tell Dana! Send your restaurant “Dish” to Dana McMahan at thecjdish@gmail.com and follow @elleferafera on Instagram.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Tips you need to know when cooking with butter