Photos of recipes from the new book Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Photos of recipes from the cookbook Tender Grassfed Meat
Nine Ways to Enjoy Butter without Grains
By Stanley A. Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue
Adding grass fed butter to organic Earl Grey tea makes it more delicious and nutritious.
Most people seem to think that butter can only be eaten with bread or some other grain. Many people who cannot tolerate grains do without butter. This is a shame, because real pastured butter from grassfed cattle is one of the very healthiest foods we can eat, loaded with many nutrients that are hard to find elsewhere. Our ancestors realized the worth of this sacred food, and developed many ways to eat it.
Here are nine of my favorite ways to use butter without grains:
With Grassfed Beefsteak
This is one of the truly simple and magnificent combinations of flavor. It is best to have the butter at room temperature. Just before serving the steaks, place several thin slices of butter on the plate, and quickly cover them with the hot steak. The butter will melt, and mingle with the meat juices to make one of the easiest and most delicious sauces you will ever enjoy. Dipping each piece of meat in the butter just before eating is so delicious.
Alternatively, you can place the butter on top of the steak, but that will not melt as efficiently. Or, you can place the steak on the sliced butter and put some more thinly sliced butter on top of the steak. Delicious and nutritious.
With Roasting Meat
I have read literally thousands of old recipes for roasting grassfed meats. A huge number of them advise placing butter on the meat before roasting. It is utterly traditional. This technique is especially good for these fat phobic times, when butchers usually trim all of the fat off roasts. It is so simple to use. Just cover the top of the roast with butter. The butter will add wonderful flavor and nutrition to the roast.
With Hot Vegetables
One of the oldest and most delicious ways to use butter is to put it over steaming hot vegetables. This will greatly increase the taste and nutrition of any hot green vegetable, even making steamed vegetables palatable. Just put some thinly sliced butter over the vegetables just before eating them.
With Roast Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes have enjoyed new popularity recently, and are full of nutrients. I like to roast sweet potatoes in their skins until they are very soft, slit them open, and stuff slices of butter into the sweet potato. I will mash the butter into the potato with a fork. When it melts, it is utterly delicious. And you get the vital nutrients of butter as well.
With Hot Coffee
Many people put cream in their coffee, but butter is even better. It works best with room temperature butter and hot coffee. Stir the butter into the coffee with a spoon, and drink while hot. Start with a small amount, and increase to your taste. It adds a wonderful buttery richness to the coffee. This will also work with coffee substitutes. Different but delicious.
With Hot Soup
Many traditional recipes call for adding butter to soups just before serving. This is especially good with soups that are based on cream or milk, like a traditional Boston clam chowder, but can be used with most western soups. The trick is to make sure the soup is hot, and to stir the butter in with a spoon. The butter adds a wonderful richness and its own unique nutrition.
With Hot Tea
Adding butter to hot tea sounds strange, but is an old tradition in Tibet. Tibetan butter tea is sipped at all hours of the day, being used to help withstand the cold, nourish the body, and prevent dehydration at Tibet’s high altitude. The Tibetans use yak milk and yak butter, which are richer and more pungent than cow’s milk and cow’s butter. Tibetan tea is complicated to make, but it is easy enough to slip some butter into the very hot tea of your choice. Forceful stirring with a spoon is advised, to mix the butter into the hot liquid, but the tea suddenly becomes a nutritional powerhouse, with a smooth rich flavor. You will have to experiment with the amounts you like, as this is different.
With Sauces
This is one of the most European ways of enjoying butter. Many of the classic sauces are difficult and time consuming to make, but there is an easy alternative. If you are making any dish with a sauce, add some butter to the simmering sauce. The butter will add richness and great flavor to the sauce, along with some unique nutrients.
With Eggs
Fried eggs are out of this world if you drizzle some hot melted butter over them just before serving. You can also add thinly sliced butter to hot scrambled eggs, or an omelet. The freshly melted butter will add a new dimension of taste and even more nutrients!
It is often possible to buy excellent pastured butter from a local farmer. If you cannot find local pastured butter, Kerrygold has made pastured butter widely available. I only buy the unsalted version, as it has a higher butterfat content, which is more traditional.
As you can see, there are so many ways to add butter to your diet. Traditional peoples who ate butter used it in many other ways as well. I never tire of the wonderful taste of pastured butter, and my body never tires of the wonderful nutrition that butter brings.
This post is part of Monday Mania, Fat Tuesday, Monday Mania, Real Food Wednesday, Fight Back Friday, and Freaky Friday blog carnivals.