Butter And Chives

I think I've mentioned before that I have herbs out the wazoo....they sure do grow fast. I think I grew too many at once. So now I've been working on keeping them to use in future cooking. I really don't want to go to the trouble of drying them. So I've seen on a couple of websites and from talking to my gardner friend an easy way to preserve them.

You can chop them up and put them in ice cube trays along with some olive oil, water or broth and freeze them that way. When frozen, just pop them out and put in freezer bags. This makes it easy to drop into some soup, pasta or any other dish that you want to add some fresh herbs into, especially during the winter.

I've got lots of chives, so I decided to make some chive butter. I used a small ice cream scoop to make individual portions to pop onto some potatoes or pasta, etc.

This can be done with store-bought butter, just soften and add herbs then freeze,  but I decided to make butter from some local cream.

Got out the handy dandy food processor, emptied cream into it and turned it on til I had butter. That's the easy part, although none of it is particularly hard, just a little messy, for me anyway.

You process past the whipped cream stage til it "breaks", that's a technical cooking term I hear on TV. I believe it just means it goes from being whipped cream, then starts to solidify then turns to butter. That's my definition anyway.

Then you have to strain it and push out all the buttermilk. Save this milk, it can be used in cooking or baking.

Buttermilk

Put the butter in a kitchen towel and wring out any leftover moisture, there shouldn't be much.

Freezing equipment.......

I chopped up a bunch of chive from the garden.

I  mixed the chives into the soft butter and used the ice cream scooper to portion it out and freeze. I can't wait til the next time I fix a baked potato....yummy.

I still had some chopped chives left so I put them in an ice cube tray, added broth and froze them also. Next weekend I'm going to work on parsley and basil, using this same process. Maybe I'll use some olive oil next time.

Okay, who's going to clean this mess up for me.......anyone?...hello...hello....anyone?.....dang it!!


Kathy