A recipe for grilled butter

Weird but very delicious

One of the things I cooked in almost every restaurant I worked in during my time in Stockholm, Sweden was this grilled butter.

Watch the video guide below

I remember the first time I heard about “grilled butter” from a colleague at Gastrologik. It was on his list of items to prepare for later that day. He was going to use it to baste some roasted pork loin.

“Grilled butter?” I asked him. “What do you put in that?”

“Nothing,” he told me, “we just grill it.”

Obviously that made no sense to me. How do you grill something that melts away as soon as you add heat to it? Gastrologik was a Michelin-starred restaurant, but surely they weren’t so advanced that they could undermine the laws of physics.

Anyway, as you can see from the video, it’s very straightforward, but I do have 2 important points that, because I didn’t think to script my video, I forgot to mention.

• Use only top quality 100% lumpwood coals that don’t have any added chemicals or firelighters. The flavour will be much better and, more importantly, you won’t get any nasty residue in your finished product!

• Let the butter/cream rest for a day before eating. This might sound weird but fresh from the coals it just tastes a little too strong. After 24 hours it mellows and is genuinely delicious.

And there you have it. This butter is great basted over barbecued steaks or burgers. The cream is really good to cook mussels in such as moules marinières. But I also love it in cream sauces generally, especially alongside anything you’ve grilled or barbecued. Like with anything, experiment and have fun.

And of course, be careful and have your lid ready!