Compound Butter

Do you want to impress people with almost no work? I do. 

I love having dinner parties and entertaining, but I'm known as a great cook among my friends so I alway feel the need to impress them. But sometimes I'm busy and I don't have time for anything complicated.

It's okay though, because I have a secret. Compound butter.

All compound butter is is butter mixed with other stuff. But when you roll it into a cylinder and serve beautiful slices on meat, on vegetables, or with bread for your non-paleo guests (boo) people are amazed.  

This week I made some basil compound butter just for me and Mike and we ate it on top of ribeyes and spinach. He was impressed and he knows my secrets ;)

Grilled Ribeye with Basil Compound Butter

Basil Compound Butter

Ingredients

1/2 stick of butter (or a quarter of a package of Kerry Gold... mmmm), room temp

1 cup basil leaves (or other herb)

1 clove garlic

salt to taste

Directions

1) Place basil, garlic, and salt in food processor and pulse until very finely chopped.

2) Add butter in and process for about 30 sec until everything is mixed

**you could do these step by hand, but it would take forevs**

3) Place butter on wax paper, parchment paper, or plastic warp (less than ideal) smoosh butter out a little and then roll into a cylinder and place in the fridge for at least 2 hours to firm. Slice and serve. 

Lemon Butter Chicken

When I was younger I was totally the only person in my family who couldn't cook. I would sometime help my mom, but I sort of made a mess of things a lot.  Mostly I just wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. It didn't really matter though my mom was an awesome cook and I ate really well every day. But when I got to college that all changed. I eventually got sick of eating chicken finger sandwiches and philly cheesesteak wraps every day and decided I wanted to learn how to cook.  At this point I wasn't really concerned about health (except when I was psychotically dieting, eating under 1000 calories a day and making myself miserable) I just wanted things to taste good.

Eventually I got pretty good, but according to my mother, mike, and pretty much anyone else who cooked with me or ate my food I overly relied on butter to make things tasty. I totally did do that. And at that point in my life I thought that was bad for me.  Now I still sometimes rely on butter to make things good, but I know its not bad for me. Yay!

This lemon butter chicken is something I would have made in those old days of butter dependence. It tastes totally decadent, but its a snap to put together. 

Ingredients

4 chicken thighs
2 lemons, zested and juiced
4 cloves of garlic finely diced
3 tablespoons butter, use the best you can afford, its the dominate flavor in the dish so quality counts
salt and pepper to taste
optional garnish: scallions, parsley - basically anything green

1) Cut chicken thighs into 2 bite size pieces, about 4 pieces per thigh
2) Mix the juice and zest of 1 lemon with the garlic, salt and pepper to taste and then use to marinate the chicken for at least 4 hours, up to 24.
3) Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium high heat, remove chicken from marinade and dry off.
4) Place chicken in skillet, don't touch for about 3-4 minutes until it is browned on one side.
5) Flip chicken to brown on other side, cook about 2-3 more minutes
6) Add remaining left over marinade, lemon juice, zest, and butter to pan. After butter melts, toss chicken and cook for another 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens a bit and coats the chicken.
7) Serve right away with a vegetable of your choose (I chose blistered tomatoes.) Eat with no guilt over the obscene amount of butter or shame that you relied on its powers to make something amazing.