Butter Sauces: Beurre Blanc, Monté, Noisette

Compound Butters, Made Simple

Mar 28, 2009 Jacqueline Church

"Good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts." So said James Beard. Who are we to argue? Even the ancients knew the power of good butter sauce. Now, so can you.

From compound butters to classic butter sauces, like Beurre Blanc, Buerre Monté, Beurre Noir - every good cook knows this to be true: a little butter can take a meal from blah to ah.

Beurre Composé - Composed Butters

Make now, store and use later. This flexible method of blending herbs and butter can elevate simple pan sauces and dress a steak or chop.

Beurre composé compound butter - softened butter to which herbs and aromatics have been added. Used under and on the skin of a roasting chicken, for example, composed butter can flavor the skin and baste the bird.

Compound butter can be composed of a variety of aromatics, herbs or spices. Here are a few combinations and their suggested uses:

Maitre d'hotel, or hotel butter - This is the classic composed butter. It combines shallots, garlic, fines herbes, lemon zest, salt, and pepper.

For Thanksgiving - you can substitute a sage, savory, mix for fines herbes. Try the Thanksgiving Spice Rub (see this column's holiday tips) mixed into softened butter.

Black Garlic compound butter - this new Korean gourmet ingredient lends a savory, umami-rich flavor to whatever it’s cooked with. For roast chicken try this recipe:

Black garlic, orange zest, thyme, salt, white pepper, touch of sage, parsley, splash of orange or lemon juice.

Butter Sauces - blanc, noir and monté

Beurre blanc - literally “white butter” - is a reduction of shallots, wine and vinegar into which cold chunks of butter have been whisked to thicken. Often used with seafood, poultry.

Beurre noir - literally “black butter” - is cooked till it’s darker brown than brown butter. It usually gets additions of acid (lemon juice or vinegar) and parsley and capers. Commonly served with fish.

Beurre manié - kneaded - used to thicken sauces - equal parts butter and flour kneaded together between the fingers. Usually used to thicken a too thin sauce. Similar to a roux except roux is used in greater quantities and cooked in the beginning of the sauce while beurre manié is added at the end.

Beurre noisette - brown butter (color of hazelnuts) - butter is cooked until it begins to give off a nutty aroma and takes on nutty color. If you remove the milk fat solids you will have ghee. Ghee is the Indian ingredient that is so versatile, it’s well worth making a batch and keeping it on hand.

Beurre monté - In Cat Cora’s accent “burr mon-tay” - This is butter sauce that can be used as French Laundry does, to hold meats or fish before serving, as well as for poaching and for saucing. This is why Thomas Keller calls it their “workhorse” sauce. To make beurre monté one adds chunks of butter to barely simmering water, bit by bit, whisking to achieve an emulsion. Keller's butter supplier is an Orwell, Vermont farmer who calls her cow "Cash" in honor of her special connection to Keller.

Tip: To make and store compound butter: soften butter to room temperature (heating in microwave will not achieve the same results as butter is an emulsion to begin with and you want to keep the ingredients emulsified.) Add: minced shallot or onions, herbs, chopped black garlic. Mix well with butter adding freshly grated zest and freshly squeezed juice.

When well-combined, mold on plastic wrap and fold the wrap over the log pressing/scraping back toward the log on the outside of the wrap with a bench scraper or even a ruler. This will create a nice tight log, wrapped free of air bubbles.

Tip: When you have fresh lemons, squeeze and freeze in ice cube trays. Then you will never be tempted to rely on that little plastic bottle of acid. True lemon flavor will be at your fingertips.

Tip: Store your logs of compound butter in the freezer wrapped first in cling wrap and then in foil. Store away from more pungent freezer items to keep butter from absorbing aromas.

Tip: When finishing a steak or a pan sauce, you can take your compound butter out of the freezer and simply slice off a pat or two. Then re-wrap and store the remaining log as usual.

Tip: Make a compound butter to save fresh herbs for later use.

Edible Words

"Vouloir le beurre et l'argent du beurre." Translating to "wanting the butter and the money for the butter,"

Literally "wanting the butter and the money for the butter," it expresses an unreasonable or unrealistic desire to have it all, or to have it both ways in a situation that normally requires a choice between two mutually exclusive options. It is similar to the (also edible) English idiom, having one's cake and eating it, too. See the delightful Chocolate & Zucchini for more edible idioms.

The copyright of the article Butter Sauces: Beurre Blanc, Monté, Noisette in Gourmet Food is owned by Jacqueline Church. Permission to republish Butter Sauces: Beurre Blanc, Monté, Noisette in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.