It's Better with Butter

Butter-just the word makes my mouth water. Visions of flaky piecrusts, fresh steamed vegetables glistening with that golden glaze, and shortbread melting in my mouth spring to mind when I think about it.
And butter is often on my mind during the holiday season. It’s hard to do without it. Sure, you can make cookies and cakes with oil or margarine but they won’t taste as good. You can construct sauces without it, but butter will enhance any of them. You can dip fresh baked bread in olive oil, but a pat of melting butter is so much better. And don’t even bother making caramel without this key ingredient.
Butter is an essential part of my winter cooking (I think all that fat helps keep me warm and happy through the cold, dark months). Our family used at least three pounds of the stuff to get us through Thanksgiving and I’m anticipating using at least that much making holiday gifts (the Nanaimo Bar recipe I’m making calls for over a pound!).
It is the chemical structure of butter that makes it so useful and delicious. Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion, the exact opposite of the cream it is made from, which is an oil-in-water emulsion. The fat crystals and globules throughout the structure make butter solid when refrigerated, soft at room temperatures, and meltingly delicious in your mouth or in your sauce pan. These three phases allow butter to serve the cook well.
Solid butter, when incorporated with flour in the correct way and at the correct temperature, can create pastries that are crumbly like scones, flakey like piecrusts, or laminar like puff pastry. Although butter is the more difficult of the fats used in pastry making, lard and vegetable shortening have higher melting points and lower moisture contents and are therefore less fussy to work with, it imparts that one-of-a-kind buttery flavor that no amount of fake-butter-flavored Crisco can reproduce.
Softened butter can be spread on bread, of course, but can also have flavorings kneaded into it. Incorporating stock, herbs, cheese or even seafood into softened butter creates a vehicle for flavor. The fat in the butter allows the added flavors to penetrate deep into whatever it is added to. Composed butters can be used to infuse sauces, flavor vegetables and meats, or just make that pat of butter by your bread a bit fancier.
Kneading equal weights of flour and soften butter together creates yet another tool for the cook. Beurre manie or kneaded butter is a simple and quick way to thicken stocks, sauces, or gravies. Having a batch on hand in my freezer has meant the difference between serving a runny sauce or one that has the strength to cling whatever it’s put on.
Melted butter has no end of uses. First and foremost, it is the go-to topping for a bowl of popcorn. Just a small drizzle on fresh vegetables brings out their flavor and a light coat of butter on fresh noodles is a simple treat.
Melted butter does have one downside. It can’t tolerate high heat. The milk solids will burn at temperatures over 250F. Sometimes this is used to advantage as in the case of browned butter sauce, which is just butter heated until those milk particles begin to brown and take on toasted flavor notes. But if you want to fry fish in butter you will need to clarify it.
Clarified butter is butter with the whey and casein protein particles removed. It’s basically pure butterfat and can be heated up to 400F without burning. Ghee is a form of clarified butter but better. The cream for making ghee is allowed to sour and produce lactic acids, which improves the flavor and quality. When it is heated, the milk solids are allowed to brown, which imparts more flavors and produces anti-oxidants to preserve it. Ghee is revered in India as a food fit for the gods.
Now that you are dreaming of all the ways to incorporate butter into your holiday cooking, what kind of butter should you use? All butter is not created equal and, lucky for us, we have a much wider range of butters to choose from today than just ten years ago.
If you can afford it, go for organic butter. You are guaranteed that the cows were not injected with genetically engineered growth hormones (r-BGH) that raise the level of pus in their milk (yuck!). Tillamook has taken a pledge to not use r-BGH so they are a good second choice if organic is out of your price range.
Cultured butter is now readily available. This is butter made to reproduce the old fashioned way of making butter. Milk used to have to sit out for a day or two for the cream to separate. During that time, lactic acid formed and slightly soured it. The resulting butter had a more complex flavor. Today, modern butter manufacturing adds bacterial cultures to help form the lactic acid. However, some use the cheap route and just add lactic acid to the finished product. Check the label to see which method is used.
European-style butter is butter with a higher butterfat content. This higher fat content is especially useful when making pastries where the extra water in regular butter can “glue” the pastry layers together rather than aiding in separating them.
Pastured butter is butter from cows that have been eating grass rather than hay and grain. A grass diet produces butter that is softer and higher in carotenoids, which produce a deep yellow. Pasture butter is ideal for spreading and making compound butters that will be used as spreads.
Whatever butter you choose, it will enhance your cooking, because, let’s face it, everything is better with butter.


Nanaimo Bars
adapted from Swilly’s Restaurant in Pullman, Wa.
Makes 1 9”x13” pan

Bottom Layer:
¾ c butter
1/3 c sugar
2 eggs
3/8 c cocoa powder
1 ¼ c vanilla
2 ½ c graham cracker crumbs
1 ¼ c coconut
2/3 c walnuts, coarsely chopped
Middle Layer:
1 c butter, cut into small pieces at room temperature
3/8 c cream
2 T. custard powder or vanilla pudding mix
4 c powdered sugar
Top Layer:
9 oz bittersweet chocolate
½ c butter
½ T. cream (more if needed)

Bottom Layer:
In a medium size saucepan, melt butter. Remove from heat and whisk in sugar and cocoa. Whisk in eggs and stir until custard-like. Whisk in vanilla.
In a large bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, coconut and walnuts. Mix in chocolate mixture and stir until well blended and the consistency of dough. Press into a greased 9”x13” pan. Refrigerate until cool.

Middle Layer:
In a food processor, blend butter, custard powder and cream until smooth. Add the powdered sugar 1 c. at a time until well blended. Spread mixture over well-cooled bottom layer. Make sure the layer is smooth and flat. Refrigerate until firm.

Top Layer:
In a double boiler or thick-bottomed pan on low heat, melt chocolate, butter and cream until just melted. Mixture should be pourable but not runny. Add more cream if necessary to get the correct consistency. Pour over well-chilled middle layer. Spread evenly by tilting the pan to cover.

Refrigerate well then cut into squares.