Garden to Kitchen ~ Chive Compound Butter

After all the rain around here, my chive plant was ready for a big haircut! So, I lopped off a bunch and brought it in to the kitchen for transformation. One of my favorite ways to use an abundance of herbs from the garden is to mix them into butter. Oh yeah - who doesn't love butter?

Now, I have made homemade butter before, and it is divine, but sometimes you have to just work with what's on hand. So for this compound butter (which is what you call butter with flavor or ingredients added to it), I simply softened four sticks of unsalted organic butter, mixed in finely chopped fresh chives, and added fine sea salt to taste.

To store it, I formed the butter into a cylinder, wrapped it in parchment paper, and tied the ends with kitchen twine. It looks like a big stick of buttery candy! Three rolls went into the freezer, and one into the refrigerator, ready to be spread, drizzled, melted... on bread, meat, veggies, whatever. As Julia Child said, "With enough butter, anything is good."