What Is Cowboy Butter?

Butter makes all of the items greater. That’s not solely a saying—it’s a reality. And cowboy butter takes the creamy staple to a whole new diploma with a mixture of spices and herbs, transforming it proper right into a flavorful condiment that you just’ll want to dollop on grilled steak, unfold on Texas toast, and even soften and drizzle over popcorn.

What Is Cowboy Butter?

Cowboy butter is a kind of compound butter, which suggests it’s butter that’s been seasoned. Cowboy butter is butter blended with spicy and tangy parts and pairs significantly correctly with barbecued or grilled meats, bread, beans, and corn—in numerous phrases, meals you’d take into consideration a gaggle of cowboys would eat spherical a campfire.

How Did Cowboy Butter Get Its Determine?

Whereas it appears that evidently not a soul is conscious of for constructive, there’s a rumor that cowboy butter was born at Mr. Donahue’s—a now-shuttered NYC restaurant as quickly as recognized for its Southern-style selections. A peek at their menu reveals a mouthwatering itemizing of sauces, with cowboy butter displaying on the excessive. Even when its origins are blurry, the determine makes intuitive sense.

What’s In Cowboy Butter?

Cowboy butter is commonly blended with a mixture of acidic parts, spices, and herbs—and a great deal of them, as compound butter is loaded with texture and style. Most cowboy butter recipes title for lemon juice and mustard for acidity; paprika, cayenne, chili powder, or chili flakes for spice; and chives, parsley, and thyme for the herbs.

Nonetheless the great issue about compound butter is that it might be made with all types of spices and herbs and nonetheless type good, because of butter. Do you have to’re not a fan of spices, are working low on current herbs, or just want an amazing simple strategy to acquire associated outcomes, attain for premixed ranch seasoning and blend it with softened butter. It’s equally delicious, a cinch to make, and a crowd-pleaser moreover.

How To Make Cowboy Butter

For Melty, Dipp-able Cowboy Butter

Some recipes for cowboy butter start by melting butter in a saucepan, step-by-step together with inside the spices and herbs. Because of many style compounds in spices are fat soluble, together with the spices to the butter not solely infuses the butter with their style, nonetheless the flavors turn into far more pronounced as they’re heated and gently toasted. 

This method is most interesting used when there acquired’t be any leftovers, as melted butter acquired’t ever return to its distinctive creamy consistency, and may even sort a separated or grainy texture.

For Delicate and Spreadable Cowboy Butter

If you happen to want to whip up a batch of cowboy butter to have available or select to unfold or dollop your butter fairly than drizzle it, go together with the no-cook methodology. It takes minutes to make and may very well be made correctly upfront. 

Merely combine room-temperature butter with a balanced mixture of your favorite herbs and spices, along with a splash of an acidic ingredient of your choosing, then mix collectively until correctly blended. Use immediately or wrap tightly in parchment paper, sort proper right into a log, and refrigerate for as a lot as two weeks. You may too retailer the butter in an airtight container for as a lot as six months inside the freezer.