A pantry shelf of jars, tins and bottles — butter

In the pantry · 202 uses

butter

Flavor and body in the same spoonful. Cold butter swirled into a hot pan with the heat off thickens a sauce without flour, which is the most useful thing it does and the thing most cooks never use it for.

163

dishes and drinks that need it

more where it is worth adding

82%

of those are under 30 min

The technique underneath this

Pan sauceTurning what stuck to the pan into a sauce. Two minutes of work at the end of something you already cooked.watery · too salty · greasy · broken · bitter
Pie doughKeeping butter in visible pieces and gluten underdeveloped, which is the exact opposite of bread and trips everyone once.tough · shrank in the tin · greasy · cracked when rolled · soggy bottom

Handling butter

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Reviewed video for the prep and the technique this one turns up in.

What it is usually standing next to

Nothing dominates: the most common companion, eggs, appears in only 28% of them, so this is an ingredient that gets around.

Counted off required ingredients across the whole library. A companion listed here is one these dishes are built from, not one we are recommending.

If you have twenty minutes

Quickest dish · 8 min

Anchovy butter toast

Anchovy mashed into soft butter an hour ahead if you can. Nobody will name it, everybody will finish it, and it costs about a pound.

Quickest drink · 6 min

Hot buttered rum

Butter, sugar and spice whisked into hot rum. It sounds like too much until it is November and you are outside.

Built on it · 163

Take it out and the dish is something else. Fastest first.

Worth adding · 39

These work without it. They work better with it.

Out of butter?Rank this against my whole shelf Open butter in the Flavor Lab Back to the pantry

Three moves. Then cook.

Start with the meal, not the database.

How to get around