It's official: Everything is better with butter! Chefs and food experts are revealing the richest, creamiest buttery dishes out there.
It's official: Everything is better with butter! Chefs and food experts are revealing the richest, creamiest buttery dishes out there.
Episode content:
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Find episode transcript here: https://the-best-thing-i-ever-ate.simplecast.com/episodes/buttered-up-ft-alex-guarnaschelli-jeff-mauro-and-marc-murphy
SPEAKER 1: Who doesn't love great food?
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SPEAKER 2: It's more than just eating. It's an experience.
SPEAKER 3: Is there any more?
SPEAKER 4: This is the best thing I ever ate.
SPEAKER 5: Butter pretty much makes any food better than it was before it arrived on the scene. I'm talking about the Cajun Shrimp and Grits at Tillie's in Short Hills, New Jersey. When you eat the browned butter shrimp with the buttery corn grits, oh, I mean, that's where butter comes to party. This chef, Wirt Cook, worked with me at Butter for many years.
So to say that he has a big tradition of using butter, that's an understatement. All shrimp and grits are here. This is here.
SPEAKER 6: First thing in the morning, we peel and dry of all of our shrimp. It's a mixture of a lot of different things-- granulated garlic, granulated onion, mustard powder, bay leaf.
SPEAKER 5: Cayenne, paprika-- I mean, the only thing that's left behind in the spice drawer is the cinnamon. The grits for this dish are made with local grits.
SPEAKER 6: We use two kinds of grits. We use a coarse grit, and we use a very coarse grit. And that's going to give it a little extra texture and give it a little bit more corn flavor.
SPEAKER 5: It's cooked in equal parts of milk and water, pepper, salt until they're tender. And that can take a while.
SPEAKER 6: To finish the grits, we churn our own butter. We use heavy cream. And we use a full fat sour cream so that we can kind of get as much fat into it as possible. You put those together in the mixer with some salt, we whip it until it turns into butter and buttermilk, and then we strain it.
SPEAKER 5: And then that gets whisked into the grits. It's so good. But the most important use of the butter is when he takes it and browns it in a really hot pan. It gets that wonderful, almost nutty almondy, hazelnutty note, then they drop the shishito peppers and the shallots into that.
SPEAKER 6: Some whole roasted garlic cloves-- deglaze the pan with some brandy. Then we're going to add a little bit of Chinese rice wine, some Outerbridge's Sherry Pepper sauce, hot sauce, some Worcestershire sauce, and the shrimp stock.
SPEAKER 5: Add the shrimp. And then when that comes together, you are set. [SIGHS] And then we dig in. The shrimp are naturally sweet, and they're coated in that layer of nutty, gloriously browned butter.
It picks up on the sweetness of the shallot, that little bit of heat from the shishito pepper, all those Cajun spices, the confit of garlic cloves, the hot sauce, the Worcestershire, the shrimp stock, and most importantly, that wonderful buttery note from the corn grits for like butter-coated corn. It's the best shrimp and grits I've ever eaten, bar none.
SPEAKER 7: I still wear the Sandwich King crown. I got it locked up in my man cave, a.k.a. the laundry room. It's waiting for me right now. And I know a thing or two about sandwiches. And this is a perfect sandwich. When it hits your tummy, it's like, oh, hi, honey butter fried chicken sandwich. My name's--
SPEAKER 8: So the first step in making honey butter fried chicken is to brine the chicken, which actually makes it super juicy. And we can impart some flavor. We use a little bit of sugar and salt, some citrus zest, some chili flake and water, and let the chicken sort of soak in that deliciousness overnight.
SPEAKER 7: And all fried chicken joints have a different dredge. I happen to think that honey butter fried chicken has the best dredge.
SPEAKER 8: So we have tons of garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, and lots of black pepper. All right, so start with the brine chicken. And I put that in the buttermilk to soak into this seasoned flour.
SPEAKER 7: And place in the deep fryer till it's crispy golden brown. Then right out of the fryer, they hit it with the little salt for even more seasoning and smoked paprika.
SPEAKER 8: So let's make some honey butter.
SPEAKER 7: And can you guess what's in honey butter? Good butter in honey. So you have the fried chicken, the best you've ever had, honey butter, served on a bun, which is brioche, which is buttery. Do you take a bite of this? It's the juiciest piece of chicken, combined with the sweet, salty, and creamy waterfalls of honey butter, hmm, dripping over the crackly crust, so crunchy and crispy.
There's no need for some sauce on this sandwich. The butter is the sauce. [CACKLES] There's no need for vegetables. The butter is the vegetables. [SQUAWKS] It's all about the fried chicken in the butter having a private two for party. Ha!
SPEAKER 8: Jeff, calm down.
SPEAKER 7: Sorry. I've ruined it for everybody else going before me or after me. I win. What's like butter-flavored with butter. What? Exactly. Yes, that's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER 9: I love butter, butter for days. The brown butter key lime donut at Du's Donuts in Williamsburg is insane because it's a delicious, crumbly, caky, New England-style cake donut, glazed with key lime and topped with brown butter crumble. Donuts for days. Du's Donuts, first of all, it's a donut shop by molecular gastronomist Wylie Dufresne, hence the name Du's Donuts.
This is a Michelin-starred chef who has taken all of his scientific knowledge and expertise and distilled it into a handful of donuts. The best possibly being the brown buttered key lime donut.
SPEAKER 10: That sort of tartness of the key lime offsets the real sort of nutty richness of the brown butter, so it's really reminiscent of an actual key lime pie.
SPEAKER 9: It's delicious. Or should I say Du-licious?
SPEAKER 10: All right. I'm going to make the brown butter solids for our glaze and for our topping of our donuts. So we're going to just take some unsalted butter. We're going to put it in a pot, boil out all the water, add some milk powder to it. And let all those milk solids brown and toast, and strain out the liquid fat. And we're going to have brown butter solids.
SPEAKER 9: The parts that have this nutty aroma--
SPEAKER 10: I'm going to go ahead make the brown butter glaze. So we're going to take these solids that we browned earlier. We're to put them in the blender with some water. Then I'm going to add some more milk. Blend that together, and bring it up to a boil. Add some sugar, some salt, and some glucose or the bunch of confectioners sugar.
SPEAKER 9: And you got brown butter times 1,000. Then the crumbly New England-style cake donut swims down this little river of frying oil.
SPEAKER 10: So now our donuts are cool. We're going to go ahead and glaze the donuts and put some more brown butter solids on top.
SPEAKER 9: And then they finish it off with a key lime drizzle. What? Exactly. Yes. That's what I'm talking about. The first bite, you have this sort of loose caky crumb of the donut itself. And then you get the sweet tart flavor of the glaze. But then this nutty, toasted, almost hazelnut flavor from this brown butter crumble. So it's like butter-flavored with butter that's been browned. It's meta. I know. It's delicious. The greatest part about this is-- I've seen the show, you guys have the actual food, right?
SPEAKER 10: Yeah.
SPEAKER 9: The key lime brown butter donut-- Du's donuts-- that's not the donut, guys. That's not the donut.
SPEAKER 11: What? What do you mean?
SPEAKER 9: So it's-- I'm out of here.
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SPEAKER 12: There's bag croissants. There's OK croissants. And then there's like the top 2% of croissants. And this is above that. Talking about those pure butter croissants from Ken's Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon. I mean, these things are really loaded with butter. So crispy and crunchy and flaky and chewy, absolutely awesome, off the charts, the best croissants I've ever had.
I don't eat croissants very often because most croissants are just like, eh. But if I go to Portland, I go to Ken's every time. I always feel super bad for the rental car guys when we bring back a car from Ken's because you get four to six adults in an SUV eating these things, they shatter like a White Walker. You bite into them, there's crumbs going everywhere because they're so crispy and crunchy on the outside and soft and gooey and chewy on the inside. They're a wonderful.
SPEAKER 13: So we start with this bunch. And I'm going to do a flour, water, and yeast mixture for about two minutes. The next step is going to be mixing our flour, our water, our milk and our eggs together for about two minutes, so it gets to know each other. Then we're going to mix in our sugar and our butter after a 12-minute [INAUDIBLE].
SPEAKER 14: A little yeast-- yeast adds flavor. And then they take their levain. It's like a sourdough starter which is going to increase the flavor of these croissants.
SPEAKER 13: Then we're going to mix it up and add the salt and the sugar. And there, it's going to ferment for about anywhere between six and seven hours depending on the temperature of the bakery. And then we have our pure butter dough.
SPEAKER 14: The next step-- you make a laminated dough, so you have a full-sheet tray of dough to a half-sheet tray of butter. Oh, my goodness. And this is a European-style butter-- higher in milk fat and lower in moisture. So you're going to get more flavor from the fat, and you fold it like a book. And then you roll it back out, and fold it like a book. And you keep doing that.
SPEAKER 13: Now, I take these pads, and I let them chill overnight for at least 24 hours. And then they're ready to make croissants.
SPEAKER 14: So they take them out, make the shapes, and then they egg wash these bad boys, bake them in a really hot oven. And that's where you get all these thousands of layers of flaky goodness. Because the steam goes out of the butter, it poofs. You get one of these warm croissants. It's all crunchy on the outside, warm and steamy on the inside.
Put some of this Marionberry jam. Oregon's known for Marionberries. and it's sweet and crunchy. And then you got this extra buttery creaminess with this beautiful sweet but kind of tart jam. I mean, it is next-level stuff.
SPEAKER 15: Calling all lobster roll lovers.
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Let's talk lobster rolls, guys. So I'm traveling around, and I'm at this amazing restaurant in Maine, Eventide Oyster Company. And I see on the menu brown butter lobster roll. I'm like, wait a minute. I haven't thought of this one-- brown butter and lobster? And then I tried it, and it was really, really amazing. And I got to tell you, I think everybody was eating them. Winning.
Butter is synonymous with lobster, right? I mean, when you have a whole lobster, you dip it in butter. Butter, lobster, they go together.
SPEAKER 16: Literally, the most important ingredient for the lobster roll we serve is the brown butter. Butter is made up of three things-- milk fat, water, and milk solids. What we do to really amplify the brown butter flavor is we just add a whole bunch more of milk solids.
SPEAKER 15: It's out of this world.
SPEAKER 16: Start to see the butter caramelizing, getting a little brown. So we turn off the heat, and then we add lemon which helps stop the cooking process and also provides a little acidity.
SPEAKER 15: Brown butter in French is called beurre noisette, which really means hazelnut butter. Because when you take butter and the milk solids just start to burn, they get that beautiful toasted hazelnut flavor.
SPEAKER 16: So next, I'm going to add our Maine lobster.
SPEAKER 15: They use the claws, the knuckles, the tail, the whole thing.
SPEAKER 16: We undertook our lobster a little bit because we know we're going to be heating it.
SPEAKER 15: And they warm the lobster meat with this brown butter vinaigrette. And then they shove it inside a steamed bao bun. It's a homemade bun.
SPEAKER 16: Garnish with a little chives.
SPEAKER 15: And you put it in your mouth. And you go, these guys got it. When you bite into the perfectly-cooked sweet lobster meat, it's coated with that beautiful brown butter hazelnutty flavor. The bun is steamed, and it's warm. You get the lobster that's warmed up a little bit with this vinaigrette. And it's so perfect. I don't even know how many people I've sent to this place. But every time they come back, they're like, you're right. This was the best lobster roll I've ever had.
SPEAKER 17: Butter does everything. And I'm a baker, so I probably use butter and sugar more than anything else. And the best buttery thing I've ever had is the Philly Butter Cake from Flying Monkey Bakery in Philadelphia. I'm pretty sure it's like 75% butter. [LAUGHS] And that's why I like it. That's why everybody likes it. Flying Monkey has all kinds of American-baked specialties.
Whenever I have friends that are visiting Philadelphia, I'm always like, hey, we've got to go to the Reading Terminal, and we have to go to Flying Monkey. And you have to get a piece of this Philly Butter Cake, maybe two. And my friends will be like, butter cake, what? But then they eat it, and they get it. And they want it the next time they're back in the city.
It's like a slice of a buttery sugar cookie with this sweet salty kind of sticky buttery custard on top. So good.
SPEAKER 18: So first, we're going to make our crust.
SPEAKER 17: All purpose flour and cake flour and then they add cold cubed butter. Butter is used in three different ways to make this cake, which is cool.
SPEAKER 18: Now we're going to add our eggs.
SPEAKER 17: Then they add even more butter, so they pour in melted butter. And then they press the dough into a foil-lined sheet tray, and then they make the filling.
SPEAKER 18: We're going to start with cream cheese.
SPEAKER 17: Which adds like a nice body and a nice tang to it.
SPEAKER 18: And add a little bit of our 10x confectioners sugar.
SPEAKER 17: Salt, eggs, vanilla.
SPEAKER 18: And more sugar.
SPEAKER 17: At this point, it's kind of like a cheesecake.
SPEAKER 18: And then our final ingredient--
SPEAKER 17: You guessed it.
SPEAKER 18: --a lot of melted butter.
SPEAKER 17: [LAUGHS] And then they pour that molten butter goodness on top of the cookie crust. Pop this whole thing in the oven, 325 about 30 to 40 minutes. And then the secret is that they chill this butter cake overnight. That causes the buttery filling on top to kind of set up and get really dense and fudgy.
You have the crust, which is tender and kind of melts in your mouth like a really buttery sugar cookie that's slightly under baked. But it still has a nice crunch and a good balance of sweet and salty. But then on top of this, you get fudgy melt in your mouth buttery goodness. And it creates this like addictive cycle that makes you just want to keep eating it. It's like sweet, salty, sweet, salty. It's just everything you need.
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SPEAKER 19: I was so blown away by this dish because when I ate it, it was so delicious that I could not believe it was actually vegan. At ABCV in New York City, the Tropical Sundae is the best thing I ever ate because they're actually using their own soy butter. This is made with a particular intent to blow your socks off.
Vegan butter, how is that possible? Well, they did it. And that's the key to this incredible, very special dessert. So I discovered this dish because my wife ordered it. And I sort of, but really, you're going to order that? Then I had seven bites of it, and then we ordered another one. And then I got kind of upset because I was like, where have you been all my life? They start by making the ice cream portion, which is--
SPEAKER 20: The vanilla coconut soft serve. We start by splitting vanilla bean. And take the seeds out, and mix it in with the sugar. Then I'm going to put coconut milk, oat milk, fresh coconut, salt, and vanilla.
SPEAKER 19: Blend it all in a Vitamix. Then they strain it. Then they put it in a soft serve ice cream machine and chill it. [WHISTLES] When it comes out of the soft serve machine, if I gave it to you, you would not know it was an ice cream. Then they make a vegan soy butter.
SPEAKER 20: To make the vegan butter, I start by taking the soy milk and adding some liquid lecithin, xanthan gum, apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, and sunflower oil.
SPEAKER 19: They chill it down, and it tastes like butter. Again, holy vegan. Then they make the passion fruit caramel, which is lemon juice and sugar and water.
SPEAKER 20: Once that comes to a caramel, we whisk in our vegan butter, coconut milk, sea salt, vanilla extract, and passion fruit puree.
SPEAKER 19: Then you assemble. You put your coconut ice cream down in the bowl and then your gorgeous selection of tropical fruits.
SPEAKER 20: Right now it is dragon fruit, pineapple, and mango. Next, we add mochi.
SPEAKER 19: Which is basically a Japanese rice cake. You drizzle the passion fruit caramel all around. Top it with some beautiful toasted coconut flakes. And you have the best thing I ever ate. And it's just freshness. It's alive. It's vibrant. And it's tangy and sweet. And the coconut's dried, so you have a crunch. It's tropical. This is [INAUDIBLE] a cake. And then that beautiful passionfruit caramel, just like rounds everything out.
SPEAKER 21: And you probably love it when your wife proves you wrong.
SPEAKER 19: Well, it's everyday, so it's not that unusual anymore.
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