15 Butter Hacks Every Home Cook Should Know

Today we've got butter hacks,

tips and tricks that will take your cooking

to the next level.

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One of the ways we use butter in the professional kitchen

is that we butter-baste things.

It adds flavor, but it's also GONNA add this nice

crusty texture on the top of our steak.

You can see we cooked the steak on high heat

to start that browning process.

Now, I'm gonna lower my heat down just a little

to, like, a medium heat.

I don't want my butter to burn.

Now we want to add that nice golden crust.

I'm gonna take some nice knobs of butter.

[pan sizzling] [funky upbeat music]

Don't be shy with this, okay?

You wanna add enough butter

so that we can actually coat the steak.

Couple of sprigs of thyme.

You can use rosemary,

you can use whatever aromatic that you like.

And then I have a little garlic.

Just gonna give that a light smash.

Don't worry about the peel.

This is for flavor.

We're not Gonna serve this with the steak.

Now, as my butter starts to brown

and I start to get those really nice nutty flavors,

I'm just gonna take the butter.

I'm gonna start spooning it over the top of my steak.

As the butter browns,

it's gonna help the steak get a nice crust on the outside.

There we go.

If you ever wanna get people hungry,

this is the way to do it.

Baste your steak with butter, herbs, and garlic.

You can do this with pork chops, fish, seafood, chicken;

butter basting works for all of these things.

I'm gonna stop basting

once I see that I'm getting the crustiness

that I really want.

Look at this steak.

It is absolutely gorgeous.

It has a beautiful crust.

So our steak is rested.

It is time to slice.

I'm gonna take off the bone.

It's a bone-in ribeye.

It has a beautiful crunchy crust to it.

That butter, that garlic, that thyme

is going to add to our flavor.

I'm gonna hit it with a little bit of sea salt,

a little more fresh thyme.

You can see that we have that

beautiful crust on the outside.

Let's give it a taste.

Mm. It's crusty, salty.

It's caramelized on the outside.

The meat is super tender.

You can taste the butteriness,

but it doesn't overshadow the steak.

If you haven't done it, give it a try.

You're gonna send me thank-you letters.

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One of the ultimate butter hacks is browning your butter.

Butter's made of two things: butterfat, butter solids.

Brown those butter solids;

it'll take everything to the next level.

I'm gonna start out on kind of a medium heat,

and I'm gonna add my butter to the pot.

Brown butter is one of those things that adds

a ton of complexity to a lot of different dishes.

If you put brown butter in cookies or cakes,

you're gonna have a deeper kind of roasty flavor,

more richness.

This is one of those things

that you can actually prep ahead.

You can put it in the fridge or the freezer.

It lasts a long time.

Once my butter melts, I'm just gonna put the whisk in there

on medium heat.

What happens when you're melting the butter

is the solids start to sink down to the bottom,

and using that whisk

kind of keeps them suspended in the butter

so they brown more evenly,

and they don't just stick to the bottom

and brown on the bottom of the pan.

So whisk it while it cooks;

you'll see that it's starting to bubble.

And what's happening now is our milk solids

are separating out from our butterfat.

And basically that's what's gonna get brown.

The milk solids in our butter are going to brown.

So if you look right here,

the milk solids are starting

to stick to the bottom of the pot.

And this is the clear yellow butter.

So at this point, if I wanted ghee or clarified butter,

I would stop.

Those milk solids sinking to the bottom,

they can stay in the pan, and that clear yellow fat on top

will be your clarified butter.

Brown butter can have different stages as well.

You can start off with a very light brown butter

to a very dark brown butter.

I like mine to be kind of on the hazelnut side,

and that's pretty much where I would stop right now.

So you can see that our butter is nice and toasty.

The milk solids have gone nice and brown.

This is what our brown butter looks like outside of the pot.

The butter has a nice nutty color.

And then some of the solids on the bottom

have gotten nice and roasty and toasty.

I use it in sauces, baked goods.

Adds so much dimension to your food.

This will definitely bump up your cooking game.

One of the amazing uses for brown butter

is a magic shell for your ice cream cone.

So that brown butter is gonna harden instantly

and make a really nice shell for our ice cream.

Look at that. That's delicious.

Let me get in there.

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It's a nice, smooth, nutty, buttery shell.

That beautiful creamy vanilla ice cream

complements each other.

You can use this on hard ice cream at home as well;

just sprinkle it over the top.

And to people who say butter on ice cream is too much,

you only live once, eat too much.

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One of the things when I worked in restaurants

that I used a lot of were compound butters.

And compound butters sound crazy and difficult,

but basically it's just a butter with flavoring in it.

With a compound butter,

you wanna start out with softened butter.

What's cool about compound butters is that you can go wild.

It could be sweet.

It could be savory.

A lot of times, chefs will use herbs or capers or anchovies.

I have a mixture of garlic, sesame seeds,

and Korean chili flakes.

I have a little bit of paprika and some honey.

And we're just gonna mix this together

into a nice, even color

so that everything's distributed through the butter.

I can use it at this stage.

It's warm; it is spreadable.

So I'm gonna take this,

and I'm gonna slather it onto my corn.

The hot honey butter is gonna be a sweet

and spicy complement to that delicious ear of corn.

With compound butters, you could do whatever you imagine.

Have fun with it.

If there's a flavor you like,

throw it into some warm butter.

See how it comes out.

I have a lot of this butter left over.

This is how I like to store it.

So I'm gonna take a piece of parchment paper,

and I use parchment paper in my house.

If you don't have it, you can use plastic wrap.

And I'm gonna take my butter,

and I'm gonna put a mound of it,

kind of just a little off-center to the front of my paper.

And this is something that I was taught

in culinary school years ago.

You take this, you, now you fold it over the top.

So I'm gonna hold the bottom piece of parchment,

use the edge of the tray, give this a little push,

and it forms into a cylinder.

And then I'm gonna roll it up

and then twist my edges opposite directions.

[parchment paper rustling]

You can put this in the fridge or the freezer,

and you can take a slice off anytime you need it.

My compound butter is cold and firm.

I'm just gonna cut off the end.

And then I take slices.

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Unwrap it.

It will last months in the fridge

and even longer in the freezer.

Delicious, comes in handy in a pinch too.

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One of the ways I use butter in the kitchen

is to actually thicken sauces.

Thanksgiving, your gravy is too thin.

Using a little softened butter and flour in a pinch,

it's a great way to thicken your sauces.

So I have a little bit of gravy here,

and it's super liquidy.

So I want to thicken that up.

And what I'm gonna use is

what the French call a beurre manie,

which is basically just equal parts butter.

And we're gonna add flour and make kind of like a paste.

Beurre manie just basically means kneaded butter.

Not only does this help thicken our sauces,

it's also gonna add

some of that really nice buttery richness.

I'm GONNA take some of my beurre manie

and I'm gonna whisk it into my gravy.

Look at this gravy now.

It's gone from, like, liquidy to nice and smooth and creamy.

Depending on your preference,

you can add more or less of the beurre manie.

Test it on the back of a spoon.

If it leaves a line and that line doesn't close up,

you know that it's thick enough.

Beurre manie could be used for gravy, soups,

any sauce that you have

that needs to be tightened up a little.

It's a super versatile thing to have

in your kitchen arsenal.

If I give you one tip, it's gonna be this:

use butter in your sauces.

I have a little bit of vodka sauce here, and some pasta,

and this sauce is perfectly good the way it is.

But if I ever want to get it to that next level,

what I would do is add a couple of knobs of butter,

maybe, like, three knobs of butter.

And I'm just gonna stir this into my sauce.

It's gonna round out my sauce if it has any sharp flavors,

like maybe the tomatoes are a little too acidic.

This is something we do in restaurants all the time

with sauces for meat, fish, pasta.

There's always a pat of butter somewhere.

See how the sauce sticks to our pasta really nice?

It's glossy.

It's delicious.

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A little bit of Parm on top.

And we're good to go.

So the pasta gets super glossy, super delicious,

and this is how we finish our sauces in restaurants.

Little bit of butter goes a long way.

Mm.

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If you want butter that spreads really easily

and tastes great, I like to use whipped butter.

Whipped butter is one of these things that

has more air in it, so it melts a little bit quicker.

I got a big stack of flapjacks here.

Don't be shy with the butter

'cause butter makes your pancakes better.

And I know that seems ridiculous,

but be ridiculous with your whipped butter.

And this is why I love whipped butter.

It's light, it's fluffy, it's airy.

Look at the meltiness on that.

Syrup, butter.

Who does not want to eat these pancakes now?

Use whipped butter on your breakfast foods.

Use it for pretty much everything.

You're never gonna be sorry.

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Everyone's been there.

They need softened butter for a recipe,

and all they have is

[butter thudding]

hard butter out of the fridge.

This is my favorite hack.

This is something I do all the time.

So what I do with the butter is I will unwrap it,

put it onto a plate, put it into a microwave.

Go about five to 10 seconds at a time on high power.

The key here is to go small bursts,

not go the whole 20, 30 seconds at a time.

If you do that, you're gonna have a puddle

and melted butter.

So that was about 20 seconds.

Okay.

Pliable, soft, ready to make those cookies.

20 seconds.

Another trick for softening butter quickly

is the warm or hot glass trick.

I have my stick of butter.

[butter tapping]

I peel it, put it on a plate.

I have a glass of hot water here.

I'm gonna dump the water out.

Just shake, shake, shake.

And then put it on top.

Having the glass hot creates a nice warm atmosphere

for our butter to soften and not melt.

In about 10, maybe 15 minutes,

you'll have really nice softened butter.

All right, it's been about 10 minutes.

Let's take the glass off.

Oh, yeah, look.

Not hard.

Nice and soft and pliable.

Ready for baking.

Next butter softening hack is using a box grater.

Get a box grater with large holes.

My butter is nice and cold.

It can be frozen.

If you have frozen butter, this works for that as well.

Peel your butter.

The way that I like to grate is on the side.

I don't really stand it up.

Push your butter through.

You're creating a lot of surface area on the butter,

making it get soft really quickly.

Whenever you have to cut butter into flour,

you're making biscuits, or you're making pie dough,

this is a perfect thing for that too.

So instead of cutting in little bits of butter,

grate it, your little bits of butter are there already.

Our final butter softening hack is pounding it thin.

More surface area means warmer, faster.

I have two sheets of parchment paper.

This is a really great method

for getting your butter room temperature.

For also, though, pounding your butter into a slab.

You'll see pastry chefs do this all the time

because sometimes when they're making

something like a croissant or a puff pastry,

they need slabs of butter.

So the butter's in between our parchment.

And basically what you do is you get a rolling pin,

and you're just gonna hit it.

[rolling pin pounding]

There you go.

Softens it super quickly,

makes it really pliable, ready to go.

One more hack that I like to use

is the wrapper of my butter.

Butter wrappers always have

a little residual butter on the outside.

Don't throw them away.

Save them.

Use that butter

and grease the inside of your pan or muffin tin.

Don't throw it away.

It has butter on it.

Use it all.

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For sandwiches, I like to butter my bread.

It's not so common in the States.

Normally we use mayonnaise for this,

but sometimes mayonnaise can actually

make your sandwich a little soggy.

The butter is a little rain jacket for our bread.

It stops our sandwich from getting soggy.

The French do a jambon-beurre;

that's a ham sandwich butter on it on a baguette.

In the UK, like this, it's a tea sandwich.

Then we take this, put it on top, give it a little squishy.

Nothing worse than a soggy sandwich.

So put a little butter on there next time.

It's just gonna make them better.

Butter makes everything better.

If you ever wanna have a fun way

of presenting butter at your table, if you have guests over,

some restaurants will take the butter

and pipe it into rosettes or little roses.

All you really gotta do is get some butter,

have it really soft, and you press it down into your mold,

pushing it in onto the sides and down into the design.

And then you can just swipe it off the top.

This works really well for Thanksgiving, dinner parties.

Look how easy they pop out.

These silicone molds are amazing.

Take a second to clean up any rough edges.

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A little bit of coarse salt.

And you have a beautiful butter rosette

with almost no effort.

These hacks save you time, money, energy, stress.

Give them a try,

and I promise you, you'll be a better cook for it.

If you have any kitchen tips or tricks,

please put them in the comments.

I always like to read what you guys have to say.