6 brilliant butter hacks you should know

Who doesn’t love a dollop of butter on bread?

However butter isn’t only confined to being relished with bread but there are many more food items people relish butter with.

Here are some hacks that you might want to know while using butter.

Grate frozen butter next time you bake
When we bake, cold or frozen butter works best because when you’re baking a pie or bread all you want is a flaky and crunchy crust. This is where the cold temperature of the butter plays its role. The steam created by the butter while baking, lifts up the bread and makes it flaky. Butter warms up quickly once you take it out of the freezer , to avoid that you can grate the butter directly into your dough.

Make a compound butter for an easy flavour upgrade
If you want to add in an extra flavour to your dish you can simply chop butter into chunks into food processor with the ingredients of your choice, like herbs, spices, cheese, citrus zest etc. Put it into plastic wrap and chill before serving, or freeze for future use.

Always use unsalted butter
Unsalted butter is always preferred over salted butter when it comes to baking. You can always add salt if need, but if you start with salted butter, especially if you’re baking something sweet, you could ruin the flavour of your dish.

Know the butter’s smoke point
Butter can burn in the blink of an eye because it has a low smoke point , It can quickly go from brown to black in a fraction of a second, precisely the reason why butter isn’t ideal for deep-frying or high-heat cooking. So, an easy way to avoid that is to add half a teaspoon of an oil that has a higher heating point.

Baste meat in butter
Nobody will deny the fact that butter makes taste everything better including meat, steak and poultry. However, because of butter’s above-mentioned low smoke point, you don’t want to sear meat in butter. Instead, baste any seared meats or poultry with a pat of butter toward the end of the cooking process for a gorgeous finish that adds flavour and colour to your main course.

Bring butter to room temperature quickly
Unlike pastries or pie crust that require a flaky crust , most cookie and cake recipes require butter which is on room temperature, But if you’ve almost finished your work and realised that the butter is still in the fridge here’s a way by which you can quickly bring it to room temperature, Simply place the portion of butter you need on a small plate then take a glass and fill it with hot water, now let it stay like that for a while and then dry the glass quickly and invert it over butter. Let it stand for another minute before removing the glass. You now have perfectly softened, room-temperature butter in two minutes.