Butter Is Better

It's amusing to me that "butter" and "better" are only separated by one letter.  Tonight The Bride wanted to grill out steaks, and I couldn't agree more.  I needed a recipe, however, that didn't need any sort of marinade time, of which there were few remaining.  Many of the steak recipes left needed four to twelve hours to accrue added flavors or tenderize, but we did our grocery shopping at 7:00 p.m.  This left us with few options, so I decided to make New York Strips With Roasted Garlic Butter on page 100.  In previewing the recipe, I noticed that the steaks were rather straightforward.  A little salt, a little pepper, and eight to ten minutes on the grill was all that was involved.  The interesting part was the garlic butter.  Upon returning from the store, The Bride set about making some sort of potatoes au gratin, and I gathered what was necessary for the steaks.

The steaks went back into the fridge as I wouldn't be needing them for a while.  The first (and major) portion of the recipe was to prepare the roasted garlic.  I've done this in the oven before, so transitioning to the grill would prove to be rather easy.  You need to expose the cloves, so first make a cut along the top of the bulb.

Drizzle a little olive oil (this helps transition thermal energy and flavor to the cloves), and set it on a piece of aluminum foil.

Then you wrap it up, leaving room for steam to make things happy.  I typically like to leave a little vent at the top for the steam to escape. 

If you look closely, you can see The Bride's hand reaching for her phone as she was prepping the potatoes.  :)  I set the garlic on the grill, and forty minutes later it was ready.  The entire back yard had a pleasant and sweet garlic smell. 

While the garlic bulb cooled to a reasonable temperature that would allow me to handle it, I gathered the other ingredients for the compound butter.  For your tip of the day, I will give you an easy way to measure butter.  The recipe called for two tablespoons of butter.  Have you ever tried to measure cold butter?  This is especially difficult if you aren't working with a stick of butter that has the tablespoon markings.  I have learned from various baking experiences that the accepted mass of  one tablespoon of butter is fourteen grams.  As I needed two tablespoons, I used my digital scale to measure twenty-eight grams of butter.

Once the garlic was cool enough to handle, it was time to squeeze out the cloves.  The following video shows you just how easy this is with roasted garlic.

 I then used the back of a fork to bring everything together.  With enough mixing, I now had a compound butter (a butter blended with any other flavoring agent, still in a solid state).

Into the fridge it went while the potatoes cooked in the oven and the steaks readied themselves for the grill.  When the time was right, I prepped the steaks with salt, pepper, and a light brushing of the olive oil.

After about eight or nine minutes on The Forge, they came off for a brief rest.

The Bride's potatoes were ready, the steaks were ready, so we plated.  I added the dab of butter, and we were ready to eat!

Dear sweet Jesus, this was ridiculous. It is truly inspiring what a dab of butter can do to a piece of steak, let alone a compound butter.  There is, quite simply, no other easier way to truly enhance a piece of steak.  Rubs, marinades, and sauces can't touch what a compound butter can do to a piece of beef right off the grill.  It's so easy and adds so much that there is no turning back.  This will be the way I grill steak from now on.  The Bride's potatoes were religion-inspiring, bringing together bacon and smoked cheddar into an au gratin dish.  Well played, Bride, well played.