Garlic Butter

[Baby_Sham]

I had some bread in a restaurant the other day and it came with balsamic vinegar/oil and a garlic butter.

How would I make the garlic butter? It had little bits of herbs in it but I have no idea what they were.

Thanks.

[EcclesCake]

Almost certainly parsley.

[mazie]

Probably Parsley Baby_sham

[knowabit]

I just crush the garlic cloves and mix in the butter...

[Baby_Sham]

Brilliant. So, I bought some 'garlic butter' but it doesn't taste very galicky. I'm thinking butter, parsely and would finely chopped garlic work, or would some kind of garlic paste work better?

Thankyou :-)

[EcclesCake]

I'd use a couple of cloves of garlic that have been crushed with 50g butter and a teaspoon of very finely chopped parsley.

Leave the butter out to et to room temp and soft and mash every thing together with a fork.

[mazie]

Crush garlic cloves and mix into softened butter, the amount of butter to garlic will depend on your taste so maybe have some bread handy to test it on as you make it.. add a bit of chopped parsley. You can make a large amount and freeze the remainder for later.

[mazie]

Didn't see you there Eccles x

[Baby_Sham]

That's great. Thank you very much :-)

[EcclesCake]

No worries Mazie :-)

This is reigniting my fancy for making some Chicken Kiev!

[dannyk13]

It is normal to roll the garlic butter in clingfilm and leave in fridge to chill which makes it easy to cut slices when required.

[EcclesCake]

As Mazie said it you do need to taste as you go as garlic varies in strength according to size of the clove, variety and freshness.

[pastafreak]

Definitely use the freshest garlic possible. No funny green bits (bitter,its sprouting),or soft spots.

[Clanad]

What we do is place about 1/2 cup (what?… maybe 1 stick) of butter in a slightly heated skillet with about 3 cloves of finely cut garlic. Melt the butter, stirring the garlic often and avoid getting it hot enough to smoke. Strain the left over garlic bits out of the butter and stir that butter into 1 or 2 more sticks of soft butter… makes great garlic butter. Here in the U.S., we spread it on Texas Toast for a side to any pasta dish.
Texas Toast? Just thickly (at least 1 inch) slice any crust loaf (we like sourdough, but French works well)… toast it only on one side in a broiler oven just enough to slightly brown it… spread with the freshly prepared garlic butter… et voila!

[Buenchico]

Your post seems designed to confuse us poor Brits, Clanad! We don't normally use 'cups' as measures in recipes and I've never even heard of butter being measured in 'sticks'! However this link might help people make sense of it all:
http://www.deliaonline.com/home/conversion-tables.html
(Scroll down to 'American Cup Conversions', which also includes those mysterious 'sticks')

[Clanad]

Good observation, Chris... a 'stick' of butter here relies on the fact that a pound of butter in a rectangular box is normally divided into 4 equal sections which are called "sticks" for what ever reason... meaning, as your link shows, 1/4 pound of butter... They're usually about 6 inches long and maybe 1 1/2 inches on each side...

[Old_Geezer]

Just make sure you add sufficient bulbs that it burns the throat as it goes down, as then it'll be giving you the full strength of all that lovely garlic flavour. Don't do what some restaurants/pizza places seem to these days and simply wave a clove above the food for a bit in the hope some flavour may pass over onto their toast.

[mccfluff]

what's a broiler oven?

[Mamyalynne]

A Grill.

[mccfluff]

ahhhhhh

cheers mamya

[Mamyalynne]

The confusion of American terminology always make me think of the time my husband was stopped by a cop on Brooklyn Bridge, he congratulated him on his English - Bill replied ' Thank you, we invented it'.