Taste Europe | Transform Cooking with One Secret Ingredient

NEW YORK, April 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The professional chef's cooking secret is a pantry staple that's probably already in most people's refrigerator. It's butter! But if home cooks wants to take their cooking to the next level, high-quality European butter from France is the ingredient that the best chefs use to make everything taste better. Follow the secret techniques that cookbook authors and chefs have discovered to make dishes that rise above the rest.

Simply spread on bread and one can immediately ascertain the distinctive taste and irresistible tang that is unique to French butter. Charles Duque, Managing Director, Americas for the French Dairy Board explains, "Because most French butter is cultured and has a higher percentage of butterfat it's the top choice of chefs who are looking for the best flavor and texture in everything from simple scrambled eggs to laminated dough pastries like croissants or pain au chocolat."

Brown is Beautiful
Steak and Cake cookbook author Elizabeth Karmel recently shared her recipe for Pear, Blue Cheese, and Walnut Tarts in her What's 4 Dinner newsletter. With only 6 ingredients, each one is crucial, but especially the butter. Karmel shares, "When I make puff pastry tarts, I use pure melted butter to coat any uncooked fruit or vegetables and to brush the exposed part of the puff pastry. I choose a high-fat European butter over cream or an egg wash for a couple of reasons. First, I want the tart to taste of butter all the way through. Puff pastry is made with butter and I don't want to introduce an eggy or milky flavor to the pastry. Second, the butter melts seamlessly into the puff pastry and doesn't create a 'cooked' surface. It also promotes better browning and tastes great!"

Clever Cookie
Bakery cookies often taste better than homemade, and the reason is butter. Pastry Chef Online Jenni Field shares that while many recipes call for creaming butter and sugar, that's not what she recommends. Says Field, "Using melted browned butter in cookies rather than creaming solid butter with sugar does a couple of things. First, it prevents "puff," so you end up with cookies that have a nice crunch. Since you don't have the air bubbles from creaming, the crumb of the cookies will be much tighter. It's the way to go if you want a crunchy cookie."

She adds, "Another thing using browned butter does is to add something that is almost 100% fat rather than whole butter, which can contain up to 20% water. This means you will have less gluten development--almost no gluten development if the browned butter is the only liquid in the recipe--so you will end up with a cookie that is "shorter," or more sandy/crumbly, and a bit more fragile."

Sandwich Smarts
Everyone loves grilled cheese sandwiches, but the secret of how to cook them perfectly is revealed in Butter by Dorie Greenspan. Greenspan cooks her sandwiches in clarified butter. "The butter flavors the bread and allows it to color deeply without becoming too dark or worse, burnt," says Greenspan who instructs readers to brush both the cooking surface and the bread with butter.

Clarified butter has a higher smoking point and is easy to make with butter from Europe, because it has less water than typical butter, 82% vs 80%, respectively.

Best Burgers
Cookbook author Amy Sherman shares how butter is the secret to make the most delicious burgers and sliders. "Home cooks are often frustrated with how dry burgers can be. You don't need a higher fat grind of beef to make juicy flavorful burgers, but rather frozen butter." Sherman freezes French butter and then grates it into the meat using a box grater. "For one pound of 85% lean ground beef, grate 2 Tablespoons of frozen French butter. If you use salted butter, you won't even need to salt the meat. This makes enough for 3 generous burgers or 8 sliders."

Just as cooking sandwiches in butter adds flavor, so too does cooking and basting the burgers or sliders in clarified butter. Don't forget to toast buns in clarified butter on the grill. Find even more chef's tips and tricks at TasteEurope: Butter of France. 

More information about Taste Europe | Butter of France:

In France, butter is a key ingredient in many dishes as well as a staple in every kitchen.  This is promoted in the U.S. through the initiatives led by the French Dairy Inter-branch Organization (CNIEL, for its acronym in French) in cooperation with the European Union.  The joint effort aims to promote the benefits of French butter, its consumption, as well as introduce the U.S. to the myriad of differences between European and domestic butter and to increase exports.  For more about the campaign, visit: www.TasteEurope.com and join the conversation with #ButterofFrance on social networks through Facebook TasteEuropeButterofFrance & Instagram @TasteEurope.

About CNIEL:

CNIEL is the French inter-branch organization for cow's milk, created in 1974. It brings together producers, cooperatives, private industries, distributors, and food service stakeholders with the aim of carrying out collective actions in the service of the French dairy sector.

For more information:
Laura Baddish
[email protected] 
917-601-0051

SOURCE Taste Europe Butter of France