08/18/2026
Steak Butter…
I know, you think I’m just putting two of your favorite words together to get your attention. I swear, this is a thing. And it’s amazing and so simple (if a bit time-consuming).
Conventional recipes have you adding fresh thyme and rosemary to the pot, but (and I may be biased) that there is no dish that cannot be improved by incorporating Emberloft spice blends. 😁
So, to launch the Emberloft Pantry Builders Series, I give you…
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PB-001: Black Orchard Steak Butter
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INGREDIENTS
• 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter
• 4 ounces (115 g) beef fat trimmings, cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) pieces (got mine from Gartner's Country Meat Market… amazing meat shop!!)
• 1 tablespoon Black Orchard Blend (8 g)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (about 10 g)
METHOD
1. Cut the fat cold. Beef fat slices cleaner when it is refrigerator cold and smears when it is not. Do yourself a favor and cut it straight from the fridge or give it 15 minutes in the freezer first. Half inch pieces are the goal here... any larger and the centers never give up their fat in the time you have. Much smaller and the pieces pack against the bottom of the pan, where the heat actually is.
2. Like many of you, I’m working with a glass top stove which is a pain in the butt for precise heating. I recommend an instant Reed digital food thermometer. Put the butter and the beef fat in a small saucepan and bring it to 195 to 215°F (90 to 102°C). Hold it there for one hour.
Why? Fat melts at body temperature, but getting the fat out of the tissue means driving off water and shrinking the connective tissue that holds it, and that does not happen below about 190°F.
3. Read the bubbles. Once it is up to temperature, you should see steady fine bubbling around the pieces and a layer of pale foam, which is water leaving the butter and the meat.
Silence means it is too cold.
A hard rolling boil means it is too hot.
Over the hour the trimmings will shrink noticeably, turn from white to golden brown, and stop producing bubbles when they are spent. Stir every fifteen minutes or so, which keeps the milk solids from sitting and catching.
4. Add the Black Orchard Blend OFF THE HEAT. Pull the pan from the burner and stir the blend into the hot fat. It goes in now rather than at the start on purpose. An hour of active rendering would flatten the black lime and sumac, which are the reason this blend is here instead of plain herbs, and the ground spice needs far less time in fat than the trimmings do. [the image looks like I’ve already added the Black Orchard to the pot… which I have and is wrong. Learn from my mistakes 😉]
5. Add the garlic once it cools. Wait about ten minutes, until the fat is warm rather than hot, roughly 150°F (65°C). Stir in the minced garlic and let everything steep together for another twenty minutes. Fat this temperature pulls the garlic aroma out without browning it, which is the difference between sweet and acrid here.
6. Strain and cool. Pour through a fine mesh sieve into a clean jar, pressing gently on the solids to recover the fat they are holding. Discard the solids. The butter will be cloudy while warm and will set firm in the refrigerator within a few hours.
WATCH FOR…
• The pot is silent and the trimmings look the same as when they went in. The heat is too low. Melting is not rendering. Raise the burner until you see steady fine bubbling and confirm with a thermometer before starting the clock.
• The solids at the bottom have gone dark brown and the fat smells nutty rather than beefy. The pan ran past about 250°F and the milk solids toasted. This is not ruined, but it is now brown butter with beef in it, and the beef will sit behind the toasted dairy instead of leading.
HOW TO USE IT
• Basting a hard-seared steak. Sear first, then pull the pan off the heat and spoon the butter over both sides. Rest 5 to 10 minutes before slicing. Boneless short rib and chuck eye take this especially well.
• The base of a cream pan sauce. Use 4 tablespoons in place of oil to cook shallots down slowly, then build the sauce on top. The blend is already in the fat, so the sauce inherits it without a separate seasoning step.
• Roasted potatoes and hot fries. Toss while everything is still steaming so the butter melts in instead of sitting on top.
• Mushrooms and hearty greens. Cook them in it from the start rather than adding it at the end.
• Warm bread. I mean… duh. 😉
STORAGE AND SAFETY
Keep this refrigerated at all times, including immediately after straining. Garlic infused into fat is not shelf stable even after the solids are removed, and this should never sit out on the counter or be kept at room temperature between uses. Two weeks refrigerated. For longer holding, freeze in a covered container or in tablespoon portions in an ice cube tray, up to three months.
DM me if you want a PDF of the full recipe 😎🤘
