Everything's better with butter

We're simple people but we enjoy finding new ways to make something normal a little more special.  We normally add butter, and a lot of it, to lots of dishes.  I ran across something that interested me called Beurre Maitre d’Hotel.  This is a fancy french name for compound butter or butter with other ingredients added to it.  At fancy schmancy french hotels and restaurants, this was often created tableside by the maitre d', hence the name.

But guess what?  You don't have to drop a bundle to enjoy the same elegance and delicious taste right in the comfort of your own humble kitchen table.  Let's make some.  It's so easy.  All it takes is several ingredients:

• 1 stick Butter
• 1 bunch Italian Leaf Parsley (enough to fill 1/4 cup when chopped fine in a food processor)
• 2 teaspoons Lemon Juice

I know, I know.  I'm using a stick of butter versus homemade butter.  Shame on me.  I did this on Mother's Day and we didn't have any leftover cream to make our own butter with, so I actually used store bought butter.

Ingredients to make Beurre Maitre d'Hotel

Set your butter out for a few hours to bring it to room temperature and place it in a bowl.  Add your parsley to a food processor and chop very fine and add it to your bowl.  Then add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice.  As shown in a previous post, we juice fresh lemons and pour the juice into ice cube trays, pop them out when they are frozen and put the lemon juice cubes into gallon Ziploc bags and keep in the freezer to use for things like this. 

 

3 Ingredients into the mixing bowl

Since your butter is at room temperature, it should work up nicely.  Mix it all up until the parsley, butter, and lemon juice is incorporated into a smooth, evenly distributed mixture.  At this point, add some kosher salt and coarse ground black pepper to taste.  I like to use the spoon shown in the photo below.  It is bendable and rubbery and you're able to get every last little bit out of the bowl.  This can be a bad thing when making brownies, though, as there is nothing left to clean out with your fingers and eat.  Did you ever do that as a kid?  Or as an adult?  Yeah, I thought so.



Let's mix it up

Get out a sheet of wax paper and lay out on the counter and then spoon the mixture out onto the wax paper and mold it into the shape of a log. 



Log 'o Butter

Roll up the wax paper and put into the refrigerator to let it firm up.  Once it has hardened, you can slice it into "pats". 

 

Making 'pats' of special butter

You can arrange it on a plate to make any dish better.  Add it to fresh green beans or any vegetable dish,  eat it on a hot roll, or use it as the base for a special pan sauce.  



Ready to add to almost anything

I had grilled some ribeye and NY strip steaks and as I took the steaks off the grill to let them "rest" I applied a pat of Beurre Maitre d'Hotel to the top of each steak to let the buttery goodness melt over and saturate the steaks with decadent flavor. 



I'll stop the world and melt with you

And now all you gotta do is eat it and enjoy.  We now have a couple logs of Beurre Maitre d'Hotel waiting in the refrigerator for the next dish we want to add some pizazz to.  

Add a little to the top of anything.

Butter always makes everything better, but sometimes you can even make butter better!