Why Chefs Are So Obsessed With Compound Butter Right Now—and You Should Be, Too
It's easy to make, and it adds extraordinary layers of flavor with one simple pat.
The cowboy butter at LT Steak & Seafood on Ocean Drive in Miami.
Photographer: Melissa Hom for Bloomberg Businessweek
When you order a cut of charred, dry-aged beef at LT Steak and Seafood on Ocean Drive in Miami, the attention-getting component isn’t the steak: It’s the dusky red slab of cowboy butter (see recipe below) that comes with it. Speckled with chopped garlic, cayenne, paprika and cumin, the addictive topping has been such a popular flavor-boosting embellishment that chef Laurent Tourondel now uses it to top of every order of meat off the grill.
At Le Coq in La Jolla, California, there’s been an equally enthusiastic reaction for chef Tara Monsod’s bread service. Here chicken skin is cooked low and slow to a crumbling crisp, before being folded into silky butter to serve with fresh-baked baguettes.