Wild Garlic Butter
Wild Garlic Butter is a wonderful, seasonal condiment. You need just two ingredients to make it, and one of those is absolutely FREE!
Wild garlic is found in most of Britain from March to June. And with its distinctive aroma, it’s easy for foraging beginners to identify. In this post I show you how to make a simple flavoured butter and share some delicious suggestions for how to eat it.
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WILD GARLIC
Sometimes called ransoms, wild garlic is a great ingredient. It also happens to be entirely free!
Loving it so much, I’ve already written a post all about wild garlic. In there I told you where to look for it, how to identify it, and what the law says about foraging. I also gave suggestions for how to eat wild garlic.
Although the aroma is quite strong, the flavour of the leaves is relatively mild. That means you can be quite generous in using them and in a huge variety of ways.
But there’s one thing that’s so simple, and allows you to preserve the herb for several weeks, that I decided to give it a post all its own. And that’s Wild Garlic Butter.
WILD GARLIC BUTTER
Wild Garlic Butter is just chopped wild garlic leaves beaten into soft butter.
First off, once you’ve got your wild garlic home, give it a good wash in a bowl of water and leave to drain.
If you’re not using it straight away, put it in a lidded container, with a little water still clinging to the leaves. Put it in the fridge and it should stay fresh for around 24 hours.
EASY FLAVOURED BUTTER
How much of the leaves to add is really up to personal taste. As a rough guide, I suggest 30-60 grams of leaves per 200 grams of butter. For the butter you see in this post, I used 50 grams of wild garlic and 200 grams of butter.
Before starting, make sure your butter is really soft. Being an impatient person, I admit I sometimes use the microwave for this. But watch it like a hawk and ping in short bursts of just 5 – 10 seconds to avoid an oily mess. When it’s soft, beat until completely smooth.
To chop the wild garlic, I lay a stack of leaves on top of each other then cut into thin strands. Then I turn the pile forty-five degrees and chop again. Feel free to chop more finely if you prefer.
Then simply beat the wild garlic into the butter until thoroughly combined. If your butter is unsalted then you’ll definitely need to add some salt, Use fine or flaky, as preferred. Even though I use salted butter, I still add a pinch of salt to season the wild garlic.
I always shape the butter into a log. That way, you can just slice off a piece or as many individual portions as needed. To form the log, I scrape the mixture onto a piece of baking or greaseproof paper and shape into a rough cylinder.
Then I fold the paper over and roll into a smoother log, wrapping the butter tightly in the paper and twisting the ends to secure it. You can then pop in the fridge to firm up until needed.
Wild Garlic Butter also freezes well for about a month. You can freeze the whole log, although I prefer to slice into portions first.
USING WILD GARLIC BUTTER
The uses for this fantastic butter really are endless.
Try adding dabs to cooked fish, meat like steak or chicken, or vegetables. To go with seasonal wild garlic, how about seasonal English asparagus? Simply melt the butter over the hot asparagus and dig in.
Both butter and garlic have an affinity with potatoes and this butter is particularly good in mashed spuds or on baked potatoes. Here I snuggled plenty inside a hot baked potato and topped it off with grated sheep’s cheese.
Or how about crunchy roasted Hasselback potatoes finished with a slick of wild garlic butter? And what could better than some asparagus tips added to the tin for the final ten minutes or so?
Another way I love to use the butter is in garlic bread. Besides baguette-type garlic bread (try it on my Homemade Baguettes), I love pizza style garlic bread.
Simply smear the butter over a homemade bread base and put into a very hot oven. Ten to fifteen minutes later you’ll have a golden bread with a garlicky, grassy topping.
And there’s no reason you can’t add the butter to traditional pizzas either. One warm Spring evening I made mozzarella, Parmesan, and pepperoni pizzas, adding little pats of Wild Garlic Butter all over just before putting in the oven. So good!
Butter, garlic and herbs are perfect partners to eggs of all kinds. So, as you’d expect, Wild Garlic Butter absolutely loves eggs. Here I made an easy lunchtime frittata by first softening sliced onion in olive oil. Then I mixed the onion with beaten eggs and snipped chives and cooked the frittata on both sides in Wild Garlic Butter and a little olive oil.
If you’re a fan of cheese scones (who isn’t?) then spread some on my Very Cheesy Cheese Scones instead of regular butter.
And if you really love wild garlic, double it up by slathering on Cheese & Ham Scones with Wild Garlic.
Are you getting the idea?
Basically, you can add a dab of Wild Garlic Butter virtually anywhere that will benefit from its herby, garlicky, buttery caress.
A FEW MORE IDEAS:
- Add a pat to steak or chicken just before serving
- Cook your scrambled eggs in Wild Garlic Butter
- Melt into a bowl of rice, pasta, or noodles
- Stir into creamy dishes such as cauliflower cheese or risotto
- Put a dab on Potato Farls/ Irish Potato Cakes
- Melt over a bowl of Roasted Radishes
- Use it wherever you’d normally have regular garlic butter e.g. stuffed mushrooms
If you’ve never tried foraging for wild garlic before, I hope you’ll give it a go using my Guide to Wild Garlic.
Not only that, but make your first wild garlic recipe into easy, versatile Wild Garlic Butter and you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it years ago.
Wild Garlic Butter
A wonderful seasonal, versatile condiment with just two ingredients - and one of those is absolutely free!
Great on meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, bread, rice, pasta, or noodles.
Ingredients
- 200 g soft butter salted or unsalted
- 50 g wild garlic leaves washed and drained
- salt to taste
Instructions
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The butter needs to be very soft: if necessary you can do this in a microwave but only in short bursts of a few seconds, stirring between each burst.
Beat the soft butter with a plastic spatula until smooth.
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Chop the wild garlic, roughly or finely as preferred, then stir into the butter and beat again until thoroughly combined.
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Add salt to taste: you may only need a little if you used salted butter.
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Pile the butter onto a piece of baking paper or greaseproof paper and shape into a rough cylinder.
Fold the paper over the butter and roll into a smooth log, twisting the ends like a Christmas cracker to secure it.
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Put in the fridge to firm up.
Use within 3-4 days or can be frozen either as one log or sliced into portions.
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