Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Chive Butter: A Pictorial

Welcome to spring! The herbs are starting to sprout. Chives to me are the first sign of all the yummy things to come. However, I never seem to make a good dent in the supply before they go to seed (the flowers bloom and then dry out and the whole thing goes into hibernation until next year) so I've made chive butter. Serious yum factor. The nice thing about this butter is that you can freeze it so it's a great way to keep chives around long after they are gone from the garden.

First, set your butter out and let it come up to room temperature.
Next chop your chives up.

Mix them with the butter. Using a back of a big spoon makes it easier.
Plop the butter on some plastic wrap.


Roll the butter into a log.

Twist the ends to get a nice tight log

Pop in the fridge or freezer. This will keep for a couple of months in the freezer.


Serve this with potatoes, pasta, on fish or meat.
Have butter issues? I'll try not to rant about the evils of the over processed product known as margarine. I prefer butter because it's the least processed. And the French eat lots of it and they have a far lower rate of heart disease than we do here in North America! Margarine was originally commissioned by Napoleon as a butter substitute for his troops and the poor. While we can safely say that margarine today is not the exact same formulation as back then, we have discovered in recent years that the hydrogenated oil in it was bad. So why eat something that has been manipulated from it's original form? We are discovering how dangerous that really is. That being said, I do have margarine in the house for convenience sake. However I reach for the butter first. I'll get off my soap box now. You can try this with margarine but I've never seen it done. Please let me know how it works out for you.





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