Easy Garlic Herb Compound Butter

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5 from 1 vote

Easy Garlic Herb Compound Butter

A balanced butter packed with umami-rich garlic & a blend of earthy herbs, complemented by a touch of sea salt.

Prep Time10

Cook Time10

Total Time20

Servings: servings

Calories: 101.75kcal

Author: Max

Ingredients

½ cup of butter 1 stick, unsalted
¼ teaspoon sea salt
6 large basil leaves chopped
1 sprig of rosemary ~2"/5cm long leaves plucked & finely chopped (~½ teaspoon)
6 oregano leaves finely chopped (~¼ teaspoon)
3 small cloves of garlic optional

Instructions

Leave your frozen butter to soften at room temperature for a couple of hours, or use the quick-thaw method for softening butter (laid out in the recipe notes).
Once your butter is ready, prepare your fresh basil, rosemary, and oregano, and your garlic if using it. If you have an immersion blender and you plan to use larger amounts of butter at once, your ingredients don't need to be so finely chopped (see recipe notes).
Mash together the butter, herbs, salt, and garlic, using an immersion blender to better combine ingredients, if needed.
Use immediately, or if freezing, spoon the compounded butter onto a piece of wax paper or plastic wrap, forming all of it into a log and wrapping it well.
Make sure to flatten it and push out all air bubbles, and store it in another sealable bag. Place directly into the freezer and slice off pieces to use as needed.

Notes

Butter: you could also do this with filtered lard, but I don't think it would work with any plant-based fats, as they solidify at different temperatures and with different textures. If you decide to use salted butter, omit the sea salt.

Softening Butter: to soften frozen butter quickly, place the unwrapped stick of butter in a large glass bowl and heat it in the microwave for 1 minute on 10% power, heating it in 15-second increments until softened. This is a process you should watch closely, as butter melts before you know it. This will mimic the effect of leaving the stick to soften at room temperature for a couple hours, but note that if the butter starts to melt rather than soften, remove it from the microwave and set it in the fridge for a few minutes while you prepare your herbs.

Herbs: You could use different herbs in this butter, but I chose these 3 because they go well together, are powerful natural antihistamine foods, and they work well with garlic. They also all freeze very well, but using fresh herbs is infinitely preferred over using dry. If you use dry herbs, use the same amount, but expect a more concentrated flavor.

Quicker Prep for Herbs: I've made this butter a couple different ways, and if you're short on time, you can take the whole leaves of the herbs and put them into a bowl with the whole cloves of garlic. Then, use your immersion blender to chop everything together for 30 seconds before adding a quarter of the butter and blending for another 30 seconds. Then, proceed with the recipe as usual. This quicker version will have small pieces of the herbs but much less evenly-distributed than the hand-chopped version.

Nutrition