Whipped Herb Butter

Whipped herb butter is a beautiful condiment for sourdough bread. You can use this whipped herb butter in so many different ways. You can spread it onto freshly baked sourdough bread or sourdough baguettes, melt it onto steak and chicken – or even add it to sauces! Even make it into a butter candle! Use the herbs you have growing in the garden or even dried herbs in a pinch.

Ingredients

• Butter – I recommend salted butter for this herb butter recipe. You could even use your own homemade butter or cultured butter to take this whipped butter to the next level! Whatever butter you’re using needs to be softened at room temperature.
• Selection of herbs – For this butter I’ve used a tablespoon each of fresh parsley, basil, rosemary and sage. Other fresh herbs you could include are thyme, chives and dill.  I recommend 3 tablespoons of fresh herbs per 113 grams (1 stick) of butter. Whatever herbs you’re using, make sure you leave out all the stems!
• Green Onion (shallot) – Finely sliced green onion adds so much depth to this butter. If you can’t get green onions, chives are a really good substitute. 
• Salt – Even when I’m using salted butter, I still like to add a pinch of flaky sea salt to my whipped herb butter. Salt really does bring out the best flavor!

What Type of Herbs Should You Use?

The great thing about this versatile spread is that you can use whatever you have on hand. Fresh herbs will work best if you are going to spread this butter onto fresh sourdough bread because they give a brightness and freshness to the butter.

If you are going to bake the bread once the whipped herb butter is spread, then dried herbs are fine. Just remember that dried herbs are much stronger flavored than fresh, so you would need to reduce the amount you use.

I also advise using less of the stronger flavored herbs like rosemary, thyme and sage than you would the lighter flavored herbs like basil, parsley, chives and dill.

How To Make Whipped Herb Butter

This delicious condiment is super easy to put together. You only need a few fresh herbs to assemble the recipe. Small effort for a big flavor!

The first thing to do is to finely chop all the herbs you’re going to use, making sure you leave out all the stems. Place the finely chopped herbs and the softened butter into the bowl of your stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Electric beaters will also give you a good result here.

Whip the the butter using the whisk attachment until it’s lighter in color and the herbs are well distributed. 

If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can use a hand whisk or even a fork to mash the herbs into the butter. Either of these methods work, you just won’t get the lighter texture that comes from high speed whisking with a machine.

How To Use Whipped Herb Butter?

Whipped herb butter is perfect served at room temperature with a crusty loaf of sourdough. Seriously, the simple things in life are always the best, right?

But if you want to really enjoy the flavor this butter provides, you could try spreading it on these sourdough treats!

• Easy Whole Wheat Rye Sourdough Bread
• Soft Sourdough Dinner Rolls (this is a winning combo!)
• Multigrain Sourdough Bread
• Sourdough Olive Bread

How To Store Whipped Herb Butter

You can use and store this butter as a compound butter or as a whipped butter. A great way to preserve fresh herbs if you have a lot on hand, you can store this butter in the fridge in a plastic container or glass jar. It will last up to 2 months like this.

If you’d prefer to use the butter as a compound butter, form the herb butter into a log on some parchment paper and roll up. You can then freeze the log. Slice off a portion whenever you need it. Compound butter is perfect for melting over steak, chicken and fish and takes baked potatoes up a notch.

The butter will last up to 6 months in the freezer if stored in an airtight container.

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