Greedy Girl : Smoked Garlic and herb butter

I can't believe its butter!

I can't believe I made butter! Every time I make whip cream, a little voice says, "Not too much. Don't want it to become butter," but for some reason, I never took it literally. It's like I didn't believe that if I kept on whipping, it would become butter even though I knew that that is how they make butter. This time I kept on beating, but not before smoking the cream.

How did this even come about? I was on Instagram and saw some chefs throwing hot coals into a pot and covering it up with a lid super fast. I was wondering what the hell and they were doing? I went into the comments and learned that they were coal smoking heavy cream. I was like how cool is that! It never occurred to me before that that I could smoke the heavy cream. I always think of smoking the finished sauces but never to smoke the ingredient before even using it to make the dish. So two things immediately came to mind, Smoked ice cream and smoked butter. I put it to a vote on my Instagram stories, and smoked butter came out on top by two votes. I was happy because I have never made butter before from scratch,

I am no stranger to making compound butter. It is so easy to do I have a few compound butter videos on my curious account; bacon and green onion, coconut curry, orange cinnamon, spicy southwest, and classic herb butter. On the blog, I have cocoa and hazelnut butter. Each one of them is delicious; however, I didn't make the butter; I just flavored it. So this recipe is my first ever made from scratch compound butter.

How did it taste? I may have to say almost perfect. It could have been a tad saltier. I only added a ½ teaspoon of salt for fear that the salt would have overpowered the whole thing. It did not! The smoke flavor is very present on the palette it was not outdone by the garlic and herbs. I would say it's the best garlic butter I've ever had. Now let's say you don't have a smoker, skip the smoking step and make garlic her butter from scratch anyway. There is this joy that comes over you when you see the whipped cream magically transform into butter, and while you are washing away all the buttermilk, all you can think is; I can't believe its butter!

Ingredients (Printable recipe)

4 cups heavy cream
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1 tablespoon minced oregano
1 tbs chives
5 garlic cloves shredded
1 tablespoon thyme leaves

Instructions

The Heavy cream should be cold smoked between 150f and 200f for about 2 hours

Place the cream in a bowl and place that bowl in another container with ice
Place that the whole setup in the smoker
Light your wood chips place in the smoker or set the time and temperature on the electric smoker
You don't want hot fire but you do want a steady stream of smoke. I used a small number of charcoals hot and ashed over white and then placed some soaked wood chips on top
Place the cream and ice as far away from the smoking source as your smoker will allow
After 2 hours, the cream should have a slight dark-colored skin on top, my skin was a pale gray-brown color not too noticeable, but the flavor of the smoke in the cream was intense.
I smoked my cream at 150f for one and a half hours
Pour the smoked cream into a jug cover and refrigerate overnight or for at least a few hours this should be very chilled
chop as small as you can, the parsley, oregano, and chives add in the shredded garlic, thyme leaves, and ¼ teaspoon salt and set aside.
Place the mixing bowl and the whisk attachment in the freezer; I left mine in there overnight
To make the butter, use the cold mixing bowl and whisk to whip the cold cream, add ¼ teaspoon salt
It will take about 10 minutes. It will go from a liquid to whipped cream and then to butter solids and buttermilk mine took exactly 9 minutes 36 seconds.
Strain away the buttermilk and wash the butter thoroughly in water, squeezing and kneading to get out as much buttermilk as you can
Roll the butter out between two parchment sheets, sprinkle the garlic herbs all over it
fold to incorporate the butter with the garlic herbs
roll into a log or flatten into a disk,
Store in the refrigerator for a week or two, freeze to keep longer.