A simple compound herb butter adds extra flavor to almost anything you would use regular butter for. This recipe uses simple ingredients that most people have in their pantry any time of year.
Our family loves bread. Once I started making homemade sourdough bread, we would have bread with most of our meals. I slice the bread and bring it to the table and my husband would get up and bring in the butter. While I don’t know why it didn’t come naturally to me to have butter with the bread every time, it’s delicious. I also really like garlic bread so I started adding a little bit of garlic powder to the top of the bread and butter (at dinner at least). Soon enough everyone in my family wanted the garlic powder so I started mixing some butter in a bowl with garlic powder ahead of time to save the step at the table.
Eventually, I started playing around with different herbs and spices and landed on a go-to recipe. We have faithfully used these herbs in our compound butter for a year now, When I go to people’s houses with bread, the butter comes with us too!
Why is it called compound butter?
Compound butter is butter that has been mixed with other flavors to give it either a sweet or savory flavor.
What do you use compound butter for?
Compound butter can be used for bread products, sauces, meats, fish, vegetables, and even grains. I keep a dish of it on hand in our fridge primarily for our homemade bread with meals. Check out my sourdough sandwich bread recipe!
Do you need to use dried herbs for compound butter?
You can absolutely use fresh garlic or herbs in compound butter. Wash and dry fresh herbs thoroughly before you add them to the butter. Fresh herbs will reduce the length of time that the compound butter will be good for due to the increased moisture content. Check out the ranch dressing that we make that can use fresh or dried herbs as well!
What type of butter do you need?
Most recipes will tell you to use unsalted butter so that you can control the salt level. I totally agree with this in theory but I never have unsalted butter in the house. This may change as time goes on, but right now, and for this recipe, I used salted butter. Adjust the salt as needed to suit the preferences of your family members!
How do you make compound herb butter?
In a small mixing bowl, place two sticks of softened butter, 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of salt, 1 tsp of garlic powder, 1 tsp of rosemary, and 1 tsp of thyme.
When it comes to softened butter, I try to pull the butter out of the fridge an hour or so before I will need it (when the house is room temperature. This changes if the temperature is extremely high or low). If I forget to bring the butter out, I will put the butter in the microwave for five-second increments, turning it after each increment until I can easily push my thumb into the stick of butter.
Mix together until thoroughly incorporated. Typically I use an offset spatula but my toddler wanted to help so we used a potato masher. (I did go back in and finish incorporating it with a spatula)
Family Forging Tip: If your toddler wants to help make recipes, sometimes switching out a tool can make it more manageable for both the child and the adult. In this case, a spatula would have resulted in her spinning the bowl or flinging butter out of the room. However, a potato masher allowed her to mix the butter in an up-and-down motion.
Let sit in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour to give the flavors time to infuse.
This can then be brought back to room temperature to make it easy to spread on bread products. It can also be used cold from the refrigerator as a cooking ingredient. We love it for toasting grilled cheese!
This recipe makes 1 cup of compound herb butter. You can store the butter in the fridge or the freezer.
I love using compound herb butter and while I’ve only tried making savory, I’m looking forward to playing around with some sweet compound butter next. Let me know what you think in the comments below!
Simple Compound Herb Butter
Ingredients
- 2 sticks of butter softened
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp rosemary
- 1 tsp thyme
Instructions
- In a small mixing bowl, place two sticks of softened butter, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp rosemary, and 1 tsp of thyme.
- Mix together until thoroughly incorporated.
- Let sit in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour to give the flavors time to infuse.
- This can then be brought back to room temperature to make it easy to spread on bread products or can be used cold from the refrigerator as a cooking ingredient.
Save it for later!
