Butter flavored with Homemade Chives Flower

A subtly flavored butter and sublimely decorated with chives flowers. Homemade it’s easy and quick, for a stunning result with gastronomic preparation alors.

The chives, I grow in my garden and I admit, having always available on hand, I put everywhere: in quiches or flans, in fish rillettes, in my casserole eggs, on salads of course …

Here is a flavored butter that changes great classics and that is crazy elegance.
We simply add edible herbs and flowers of a plant very easy to cultivate in its garden or in planters: chives.
Because yes, like many other edible flowers, the chives flower is eaten.

Is the chives flower edible?

Everything is eaten in the chives: the strands of course but the flowers too. It has a fairly similar taste to that of chives, but sometimes a little softer. Flowers can be used fresh or dried.

The chives picks up throughout the year, but It is in the spring, roughly speaking from April to June, that his pretty mauve flowers appearsometimes calibrated from pink to purple.

Preparing a butter with the chives flower is really very easy and fast. Here are the stages summarized simply:

• We take the butter out of the refrigerator and let it soften at room temperaturewhich is called ointment butter in the kitchen, for about 30 minutes at, and it’s better, 1 hour.
• During this time, We will pick the chives flowers (for my part, I also add a few strands For even more fragrant butterthat I emark. I cut them into small sections of maximum 1/2 cm). We remove the stems and the base of the flowers (the sepales) to keep only the petals.

• Once the butter is soft, We mix the butter with the chopped chives and chivesuntil the flowers are well incorporated into the butter. A pinch of fleur de sel is added.
• We give the butter thus flavored the shape we want By forming a cylinder, a circle … By enveloping the butter in stretch film or parchment paper. We can also put it dyears a small pot. We leave the butter in the fridgeR for at least 1 hour for it to cool and take the desired form.
• You just have to taste! Take out the butter from the refrigerator about ten minutes before it softens a little. Do not hesitate to add a few flowers for a nice rendering.

Conservation

The butter with the chives flower must be kept in the refrigerator to prevent it from rancid. It is best to keep it in an airtight container To maintain its freshness and aroma.
The butter can be preserved one to two weeks maximum in the refrigerator.

Little tip: you can freeze it. Just place it in a freezing bag and put it in the freezer. The butter can be preserved up to three months in the freezer.

Culinary uses

Here is an ultra versatile preparation, which can be used in many culinary recipes. Here is Some ideas to use this flavored butter ::

• Quite simply bread on breadwhether it is a fresh wand or a toasted wholemeal bread. This will change your classic sandwiches.
• Or With radish in Croque with salt mode.
• To sauté vegetables In any pan -fried in place of your usual butter: mushrooms, potatoes, asparagus …
• Openwork to pasta, rice or potatoes cooked in water or even steam vegetables.
• Melt it on grilled meat like a steak or a fish.

Or why not test this contained roasted chicken recipe that I learned to make with chef Juan Arbelaez. Instead of putting blue, why not slide pieces of flavored butter under Ala chicken skin (that’s what we call contisite).

Raled butter variants

There are many variants of flavored butter other than butter with chives flower.
In culinary technique, this is called compound butter. The definition is simple, since it is composed with other ingredients.
The beautiful Breton brand Bordier has made exceptional butters with incredible flavors known, but you see that it is excessively simple and fast homemade.

Here are some butter ideas composed to vary the pleasures, but there are many others:

• Snail butter: I give you my recipe in detail on this blog with it, mixed with the butter of the shallot, parsley and garlic
• Garlic butter: Mix softened butter with roasted garlic (whole head in the oven or candied pod in olive oil. Perfect on toasted bread, a good steak or to cook vegetables
• Herbs butter: Mix softened butter with chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil, thyme, etc.) to obtain a fragrant butter to use in all kinds of dishes.
• Lemon butter : Mix softened butter with a little freshly pressed lemon juice and especially very finely grated lemon zest to obtain a tangy butter to use on fish or vegetables.
• Pimed butter: Add your choice to your butter or other pepper, even paprika. A variant can be by adding a PE of dried tomatoes or candied peppers.
• Algae butter Ideally with fresh seaweed if you are on a coast but it works very well with dried algae. No fleur de sel in this case.

Other use of the chives flower in the kitchen

The chives flower is often used as it is whole or only petals, to decorate the dishes. It brings a nice touch of color and flavor: in a composed salad, on a cheese dish …

In preparations, in addition to this chives butter, you can Add petals to a jar with fleur de sel for a magnificent flavored saltyou can also use it to flavor vinegar,, Make pickles with floral buttons or simply Add them to your culinary preparations Like a quiche, an omelet …