Gourmet Butters

This recipe (actually 3 of them!) for gourmet butters is here to add that final grandiose touch to your holiday dinner.

The brilliance of it is that they are so easy to make. The gourmet butters will also keep very well in the freezer until you need them so they can be popped last minute on to the table with a warm loaf of bread. Make sure you use high quality butter, or even make it yourself!

These are very versatile and can be adapted to whatever you like or have on hand. Feel free to use other fresh herbs, a bit of garlic if you’d like, any spices like turmeric or even coffee would work amazingly well.

To serve, you can make the butters into log shapes and slice them, like I did here, or you can pipe them in little meringue shapes and freeze them like that. Fancy ice moulds can also work really well, if you have them. For the brie-honey one I used some dried flower petals on the outside to make it pretty.

Without further ado, here are the recipes. Make sure you make them and keep them handy for this holiday season, you’ll be very glad you did.

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Ingredients

For the chilli-vanilla butter

• 100g butter, softened

• 1/3 vanilla pod, seeds only

• 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

• pinch of salt

For the basil-lemon butter

• 100g butter, softened

• zest of 1/2 lemon

• 20g basil leaves (leaves of one bunch), finely chopped

• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• pinch of salt

For the brie-honey butter

• 100g butter, softened

• 50g brie (rind free)

• 1 tsp runny honey

• pinch of freshly ground pepper

• pinch of salt

To make any of the butters: add the butter and other ingredients to a food processor. Pulse until well combined, about 10-20 seconds.

Place the flavoured butter on a sheet of plastic wrap or parchment paper. Shape into a log and freeze.

These can be kept in the freezer for up to a month or the fridge for up to one week.

The basil-lemon butter can also be used to top steamed white fish, while the brie honey makes the most incredible quick pasta cheese sauce.

Let me know in the comments if you make them and in the meantime, stay well xx