Why You Should Add Some Yogurt to Your Butter
Even the cheapest, simplest oil is a wonderful thing, but just as I love a lot of salts in different price categories and colors, I love all kinds of different oils, from cultured to blended. In fact, my new favorite baby is a complex butter that’s pretty well grown – all you need is some yogurt.
According to Food & Wine , people at Icelandic restaurant The Retreat add skyr to the oil along with local algae and lava salt. I don’t have either of the latter two on hand, but I have easy access to yogurt, and I can confirm that pouring it into butter is a great idea.
Food and wine wasn’t particularly interested in proportions, so I decided to try two tablespoons of yogurt with four ounces of Kerrygold butter. I let the oil warm completely to room temperature, then kneaded it with a wooden spoon in a bowl, added the yogurt, and continued stirring and chopping until a smooth mixture was obtained. I put the bowl in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to harden, then rolled it into a ball, gently blotting out excess moisture with a paper towel, then wrapped in parchment paper and returned to the refrigerator for another 10 minutes.
Then I spread it with bread and tasted it. Two things became immediately apparent. First, it spread like a dream. Even straight out of the fridge – and I have a mold that has been in the fridge for hours now – it offers no resistance as it spreads over your favorite bread. Then (of course) there is taste. Yogurt imparts a delicate, creamy flavor that is unlike (you guessed it) butter. It also adds a bit of substance, making it an ideal candidate for dipping, especially if you love dipping radishes in oil – a practice everyone should take. I haven’t tried it on baked potatoes yet, but I feel comfortable predicting it will be good. In fact, you can quote me on this.