How to Use Compound Butter to Elevate Your Grilling

“Compound butter is versatile and simple,” Rasheed says. “People are always asking how to step up their cooking, and compound butter is the easiest, most affordable condiment you can make at home to your own personal tastes. There’s no dish it cannot elevate. Shrimp, chicken, beef, you name it. Every cooked meat, every protein, benefits from a good compound butter because it allows the fat to baste and add additional flavor. It’s typically incorporated with fresh or fragrant aromatic herbs. As it heats up, the oils and fat heat up, releasing the oils and aromatics for an additional depth of flavor.”

It may sound too good to be true, but these butter blends really do take dishes (even those of the non-meat variety) to the next level despite their simplicity. Today we’re going to teach you all about them with help from our good friend Rasheed, who showed the world his culinary chops as a contestant on Netflix’s “The American Barbecue Showdown.” From compound butter’s many applications to a step-by-step guide on making and storing your very own, you’ll leave this Master Grillabilities® lesson saying, “I can’t believe I’ve never used compound butter!”

What is Compound Butter?

No need to sit down for this, because compound butter is exactly what it sounds like: softened, unsalted butter creamed and combined with other ingredients. Yep, that’s all there is to it! The real magic comes from the ingredients that turn an ordinary stick of butter into a flavorful butter mixture. Garlic, cilantro, parsley, bleu cheese, curry powder, lemon juice, cane syrup, Greek seasoning blends, and even fruits can be put to good use in a homemade compound butter! The list goes on and on, resulting in endless combinations of flavors. To hear Rasheed tell it, “It’s just butter, and then the limit is your imagination and preference.”

The History of Compound Butters

Like many other strokes of culinary brilliance, compound butter originated in France as beurre composé. The most notable among them is Beurre Maître d’Hôtel, which incorporates minced parsley, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. It was traditionally prepared tableside by the restaurant’s maître d’ — when’s the next flight to Paris? — and set atop freshly seared steaks while they briefly rested. As the Beurre Maître d’Hôtel melted, it would impart flavor notes from the infused herbs and citrus to balance the butter’s natural richness, elevating the dish in the process. That’s the idea behind all compound butters, regardless of their use and overall flavor profile.

“Regular butters aren’t designed to impart too much flavor. Butter just tastes like butter, but a compound butter really allows the dish to come together harmoniously,” Rasheed says. “You’re taking from one area and creating a whole new flavor profile. By adding something like fresh lemon zest or lime juice and letting it solidify, it turns the butter from one thing into another. It’s part of the alchemy of cooking.”

Compound Butters: More Than Just a Finisher

Though compound butters are sometimes referred to as “finishing butter” in recognition of their most common use, they can be applied at any point throughout the cook. A great example of this is Rasheed’s elevated surf ‘n’ turf recipe, which uses separate compound butters at different stages of the cook to individually enhance the surf and the turf.

He starts off preparing a lemon curry compound butter that includes hints of cilantro and turmeric, then slathering it on his lobster tails. This acts as a base layer of flavor within the seafood, similar to how a traditional French mirepoix or Cajun holy trinity sets the stage for stews and sauces. As the lobster cooks over indirect heat, the curry butter melts and imparts all of its incredible flavors — the spiciness of the herbs, the citrusy brightness from the lemon — to the meat within the shell.

For the post-cook application, it doesn’t get any more classic than topping filet mignon with a blue cheese compound butter. (Once again, shout out to Beurre Maître d’Hôtel!) The butter not only bastes the meat as a complementary finisher, but also imparts mouthwatering aromas from the incorporated parsley and rosemary; Rasheed points out that the result is “a great contrast of flavors.” But why wait until the end of the cook to make the magic happen?

“When you apply compound butter at the end of a cook, you’re getting into the meat, and more specifically, the fat,” Rasheed says. “Fat will absorb all that butter, and everyone loves the bite with that little bit that’s been rendered down by the grizzle. It encapsulates all the smokiness and saltiness, so it takes everything over the top.”

Of course, you can always use butter mid-cook, too. The most common example is basting steak as it sears, as Rasheed does with regular butter instead of a compound mixture in his surf ‘n’ turf recipe. He holds back during mid-cook in this instance because he’s using the blue cheese compound butter as a finisher, but it might make sense for you to baste your steaks with a compound blend. You may even find that your own butter blend is a superior basting liquid because of its low fat content and smoke temp relative to oil, along with the aromatics that immediately activate when exposed to high heat. There’s no harm in giving it a try and seeing how the dish turns out!

Soften the Butter

It’s important that you start with softened butter so it’ll be malleable and blend well with the other ingredients. You can achieve this by simply taking your butter out of the fridge an hour or two before you intend to make it. Before you get started, ensure the butter you're using is unsalted — this allows you to control the salt content and avoid an oversalted mixture. As Rasheed points out, “No one’s going to break off a piece from a stick of butter and taste it for salt.”

Prepare Your Other Ingredients

While your butter softens to room temperature, begin preparing the additional ingredients that put the “compound” in compound butter. This will obviously vary from one butter to the next; perhaps you need to finely grate garlic, zest a lemon, mince cilantro, mash basil in a mortar and pestle, or dice mangoes. Again, the possible combinations are endless.

No matter your ingredients or method, make sure the additions are in small quantities so they can be well-dispersed in every slice. (Especially if it’s something like garlic, where a big chunk in any single bite would be disastrous.) Also take this time to prepare accompanying spices like salt, pepper, or turmeric. Generally, a pinch or two of salt is enough for any butter mixture, but remember to taste if you’re unsure.

Carefully Cream Your Butter & Ingredients

You’ve got your “compound” and you’ve got your softened butter… now all that’s left to do is blend everything together! How you do so is a matter of personal preference: Rasheed likes a fork and a bowl, Chef Tony is fond of food processors, and others use stand mixers to get the job done. Whatever you decide, whip the butter until it’s creamy but be sure to avoid breaking the emulsion. “Just let it bind and set,” Rasheed says. “You’re not looking for peaks like when you whip egg whites, but you still have to make sure you do it thoroughly.” Master Grillabilities® tip: you’ll know the compound butter is properly creamed when you can smoothly spread it with the back of a fork.

You can slightly whip the butter until it’s fluffy and then add your ingredients, or you can add everything at once and let it roll. Many people whip their butter with salt before anything else to monitor saltiness, while certain recipes call for slow incorporation of a specific ingredient. This may take some experimentation on your part, but experimenting is half the fun of cooking! (The other half? Eating.)

Use or Store Your Compound Butter

Once creamed, you can immediately use the butter or store it in the fridge or freezer (more on that below). Some advocate for putting the butter back in the fridge for an hour or so to let the flavors meld, but the fact is you’ve already done most of the work. “As you microplane or break down ingredients, you release the oils and get ahead of things,” Rasheed says. “Then, as you whip, you spread it thoroughly to fully meld. By the time it’s done in the bowl or wrapped, it’s ready to be used or good to go in the fridge or freezer. Besides, the real magic happens when the butter gets exposed to heat — the oils get activated, and you immediately smell aromatics.”

Unless you get in the habit of making exactly as much compound butter as you need each time you cook, you’ll eventually need to store your mixture for later use. That goes double if you’re the type who likes to prepare in advance or in bulk (strongly recommended because it takes a bit of stress out of cooking days.) If anything, knowing how to store compound butters will prevent you from scarfing it all down at once — that’s not a fun discussion to have with your doctor. Short- and long-term storage options are available, depending on how soon you plan to break out the butter again.

How Long Can I Store Homemade Compound Butter?

Pork ribs have hogged the spotlight since the start of modern BBQ, but recent years have stopped putting beef ribs out to pasture. It’s not hard to see why, either: with the fattier, meatier returns on beef ribs, you wind up with an impactful rack of bones that offers plenty to love. But pitmasters aren’t done with pork ribs anytime soon! With all the flavoring options, decades of rib trends, and sheer staying power of barbecued pig, there’s just no stopping the pork juggernaut from muscling in on competitions.

But what distinguishes beef ribs from pork ribs? What different kinds of rib cuts should you expect from your butcher? How do they behave separately on the smoker or the grill? We got in touch with New Orleans native Chef Kenneth Temple, local Chopped Champion and professional caterer, to get the lowdown on the delicious, juicy ribs of everything bovine and swine.

Top 3 Mistakes When Making Compound Butter

Sounds easy enough, right? “It’s so simple,” Rasheed agrees, “yet people overcomplicate it because it seems so simple.” You might experience some trial and error when first making compound butters even if you keep it simple, so we wanted to help you troubleshoot those potential issues before they even occur.

1. The butter isn’t appropriately softened. Butter that’s fresh out the fridge will be too solid and won’t spread well; butter that’s too soft or is microwaved in an attempt to speed up the softening process will lose its emulsion, preventing it from creaming properly.
2. Your ingredients are too chunky. We also touched on this above, but it’s worth mentioning again. A slice containing a large chunk of garlic, bleu cheese, or similarly bold ingredients leads to an unpleasant flavor and mouthfeel, not to mention that finer components are easier to blend evenly throughout the butter.
3. There are too many wet ingredients. Perhaps it’s adding the juice of 2 or 3 lemons when a recipe calls for only half, or getting a little heavy-handed with Worcestershire sauce. The bottom line is that a watery butter that’s stored in the freezer will freeze throughout, meaning it won’t bind or melt as intended.

How Much Compound Butter Should I Make?

We’ll answer this question with a one from Rasheed: “How often do you use a whole stick of butter in a dish?” It really does come down to how much you foresee yourself using over a certain period of time. If you’re finding that hard to estimate at first, keep in mind Rasheed’s advice and base it on how much regular butter you’d put in a meal. You might make small portions of single-use butters for certain dishes, or you could prepare several larger logs for meals you commonly eat or to be used in multiple ways (such as a steak finisher, a base for stews, an addition to fried rice, etc.). As always, keep your personal tastes and habits in mind.

What about Ingredients?

When just getting started making your own compound butter, we recommend using a single stick of unsalted butter so you can better figure out your ingredient ratios. That’ll involve experimentation based on your preferences, but remember to keep the strength of ingredients in mind when determining their quantities. Pungent components like garlic, turmeric, or ginger don’t need to be incorporated in huge portions to leave a mark. Besides, compound butter is there to complement, not to steal the show. “You need to make the butter so it doesn’t overpower whatever you’re putting it on,” Rasheed says.