squirreling it away #4: herb butters 🪴🧈

🐿️ squirreling season starts now

Just like pesto tends to convince my son that eggs are in fact delicious, herb butters catch the interest of everyone young and old. I find using them to be the easiest way to add interest and an extra depth of flavor to anything: eggs, toast, steamed vegetables, rice, grilled steak. The list goes on.

With the cooler spring months being the optimal time for the early herbs and alliums, I try to use this opportunity every year to make the most of this abundance. Of course, there are many herbs that thrive in the hotter months that I can grow in my herb box out back, but there is such a wide herbaceous variety from late April through mid-June — ramps, chives, dill, parsley, oregano, green garlic, garlic scapes — I just can’t help myself to start right away when these things show up at the markets. So I get to work on all the herb butters and the pestos, one week at a time. And then, in true squirrel fashion, I stash them away in the freezer.

And when I’m making my herb butters, I certainly don’t limit myself to herbs. With the addition of some minced garlic or shallots, lemon zest, or diced fennel, you can complement and intensify the flavors of the herbs. But it’s all very flexible and fluid, which is another one of my favorite things about working with the bounty of this season. Add a little of this, a little of that, adjust for taste as you go until you’re happy with the product, and call it a day.

Some of my favorite herb butter variations 🪴🧈

• green garlic + rosemary

• garlic scapes + chives

• dill, parsley, oregano, garlic, shallot, lemon zest

Herb butters will always have a soft spot in my heart because it was one of the more simple but impressive touches to the food served at our self-catered wedding. People RAVED about the butter, and I was like, really? It ended up being a brilliant afterthought — it came together pretty last minute because we over-bought some of our ingredients: butter, herbs, and garlic. So after all the other food prep was done by our amazing wedding party for an amazingly fun night, my husband and I chopped up all of the herbs and mashed them together with god knows how much butter.

Since this was my very first experience catering anything, there was obviously a lot of leftover herb butter — my in-laws took it home, froze it, and used it for the next several months. They were sad to run out.

photo by Emily Scannell

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GREEN GARLIC + ROSEMARY HERB BUTTER

Ingredients:

• 24T salted butter

• 6 stalks charred green garlic, dark greens and root bases removed

• up to 2 tsp ground dried rosemary

  • grind dried rosemary in spice/coffee grinder

how to char green garlic:

• remove dark greens and root bases

• cut stalks in half, lengthwise; place on lined baking sheet

• drizzle generously with EVOO

• char green garlic on high broil center rack 5 min but keep an eye on it, let cool

• pulse in food processor with up to ¼ cup EVOO, until almost puréed

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HERB BUTTER WITH GARLIC, DILL, PARSLEY, + OREGANO

Ingredients:

• 24T salted butter

• 1/2 bunch fresh dill

• 1/4 cup fresh parsley

• 2T fresh oregano

• 4 large cloves garlic

• lemon zest from 1 lemon

• 1/2 massive shallot, minced

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THE HOW-TO:

Let the butter soften to just malleable (not too soft), add the herbs etc, salt to taste, use a fork to mash it together into cohesive blob.

FREEZE:

Shape into rectangle/cylinders as best you can, then wrap in plastic wrap (the Costco Kirkland brand is best for us home consumers, let’s be real), store each wrapped blob in a freezer-safe bag.

Serve as you like. We tried spreading the green garlic + rosemary butter on some bread and topping it with some long thin slices of French breakfast radishes and a sprinkling of some gorgeous Maldon sea salt. It’s semi-addictive.

BUTTER 🧈

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SARAH’S SATURDAY FARMERS MARKET HAUL

blurb

May 10

produce: rhubarb ($21.84); salad turnips ($8); 4 bunches green garlic, 2 bunches carrots, 2 bunches chives ($35.36)

protein: 3 fillets coho salmon, 3 fillets halibut ($85); 3 pounds ground beef ($34.32)

miscellaneous: 2 containers chili crisp ($16)

total spent = $200.52

other ingredients on hand, from last week or in freezer:

• flank steak

• beef liver

• chicken liver

• tuscan kale

• lemon chive vinaigrette

• kidney beans

• dill

• asparagus

potential recipes, off the top of my dome:

• grilled steak + asparagus with dill, parsley, oregano, etc herb butter

• simplest salmon with lemon, dill, + chives

• roasted carrots with cumin + sumac

• soy brined halibut with turnip greens, sesame, lime (a

  Molly Baz
  recipe nomination for the Cookbook Project: Will My 3-Year-Old Eat This?)

• shawarma meatballs with liver

• more charred green garlic

• carrot top pesto with charred green garlic and basil (use half for pasta, freeze the other half 🐿️)

• charred green garlic + chive butter

• massaged kale salad with salad turnips and lemon chive vinaigrette

• kidney bean burgers

Follow my Substack Notes (on the app) to see how this week of recipes unfolds. I’m actually not working any orchestra gigs next week, so I might actually be able to deliver on this promise. Social media is hard, y’all. And tune in next Saturday for another farmers market haul!

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From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here.

❤️Sarah