The more experienced a home cook you become, the more adept you are at finding ways to liven up the taste of simple dishes. Most cooks know that herbs are an essential part of the culinary bag of tricks, but what you may not know is that combining herbs with butter and oil to create compound butters and flavored oils can provide you with some super-charged flavor enhancers.  And the best part is, they are simple to make and cost-effective, especially if you have your own herb garden.

A compound butter is softened butter combined with other ingredients like herbs, wine, or shallots that is then frozen so that all the elements combine and solidify. This is a trick that chefs often use to enhance taste. In fact, in an interview with Chef Brett Corrieri, Corporate Chef at Mafioza’s in Nashville, Tennessee, he said that he creates a lot of herb butters using whatever herbs are freshest and in season. He added, “It is a great way to extended the usefulness of an over abundant (herb) crop. It is also a great way to bring that fresh flavor to items in the winter months.”

He advises home cooks that when they are making herb butters, always use with the best butter you can afford. He likes cultured butter the best (cultured butter is made from pasteurized cream that has been fermented by adding certain bacterial cultures to it). Chef Corrieri starts with a pound of butter and a large bunch of herbs that have been finely minced, as well as any other seasonings he wants to add, and then he whips the ingredients together until the butter is light and fluffy. Next, he pipes it onto parchment paper with a star tip until he gets the desired size and shape. The parchment is placed in a freezer bag, sealed, and then frozen until use.

Another way to form a compound butter is to take the whipped butter and shape it into a log. Place the log onto plastic wrap and tightly twist the ends to prevent moisture from getting into the mixture. Freeze until use. When you use it, you can slice as many pats as you wish, and then retwist the ends, and put the rest back into the freezer.

An important tip to remember is to wear gloves when making your herb butter to prevent contaminating it with bacteria. Also, compound butters only last about a month or two in the freezer, as long as they are kept in air tight packaging. After that, they will take on a very bad freezer taste.

These butters are extremely versatile, but Chef Corrieri says he likes to use them in the traditional ways,”like finishing a pan sauce or maybe on top of a grilled steak or fillet of fish. I also have used them for the butter put out on bread and butter plates on banquet tables.”

In addition to herb butters, Chef Corrieri also likes to use flavored oils. These are oils that have herbs or other ingredients added to them so that the flavor of what has been added will infuse the oil. Flavored oils are usually made from olive oil; however, Chef Corrieri said that you could also use lighter, flavorless oils, like sunflower oil.

The traditional way of making a flavored oil is to put the oil in a container and add the flavoring agent. The container is sealed and allowed to sit on a sunny window sill to speed up the infusion process. The longer the infusion process is allowed to continue, the stronger the flavor. It is similar to brewing tea using the sun. Chef Corrieri’s method is to steep the herbs in warm/hot oil, blending until very smooth, or straining out the chunkier pieces. His favorite recipes include: chili oil, basil oil, lemon oil, and roasted garlic oil, which he typically uses as garnishes to finish a dish. He also uses them to decorate a plate, in that way guests can choose to eat it or not.

Flavored oils have a much shorter shelf life than regular oil. Chef Corrieri recommends that you refrigerate any left over flavored oil and use it within a week to avoid the risk of any foodbourne pathogens.

Another chef who makes and uses compound butters and flavored oils is Mary Beth Lawton Johnson, CEPC, CCC, co-founder of Creative Arts and Media, creating food stylings for media presentations. Chef Lawton Johnson graciously provided two of her favorite recipes:

Smoked Shrimp Butter (serve over steaks, chops, seafood and shrimp and grits)

1/4 pound of fresh wild caught shrimp, boiled, peeled, deveined, and smoked, chopped fine in a food processor
3 pounds of butter-soft
Paprika to taste
Fresh thyme for flavor
1/4 cup curly-leaf parsley

Put all in a food processor, process until smooth. Fill molds or wrap with saran wrap into a log and chill until ready to use. Slice into rounds.