Go to the Recipe: Carotene Butter
Oooh, i like where this is headed
This is very cool. Are there any restrictions on using this technique with other ingredients?
This seems terrific. What are the differences through this approach as compared to the use of a centrifuge? (e.g., Is this a generally viable substitute?)And I wonder how the effect of the blender-broken-emulsion technique was discovered in this process…
- originally posted by Thomas Stanoulis
This is a viable subsitution Thomas. If you were to use a centrifuge all you would have to do is blend the melted butter and carrot juice together for a couple minutes, balance bottles on a scale then set the machine to spin. During that time you would not have to watch it in anyway. Were as this approach takes more finesse to get a yield close to what a centrifuge would give you. Im glad you ask! The first couple times I did this recipe it worked perfect, no problems. But I came back to the recipe a couple days later and it wouldn't work for the life of me. I tracked my steps backwards, the only change was I wasn't over blending and causing the emulsion to break in the blender. When it wasn't working I was just blending until it seemed smooth and transferred to a pot to try and separate.
This technique works well for other ingredients so far besides the color pigment in beets, purple carrots and so on are not fat soluble. When nasturtiums were in season we did this technique with the greens as well as the flowers (separate). You get a nice pepper taste out of the greens.
Solubility, with regard to flavor, is one of those things that I have yet to fully wrap my head around. From what I've heard aroma molecules are fat-soluble and the molecules that our tongue senses as the five tastes are water soluble and yet a perfectly clear consomme seems loaded with both. Why is that?
What's the flavor profile like for this?
Many traditional French sauces are finished with the addition of butter.... could this be used in a similar fashion? Or does the removal of the solids make this a no-go?
This would work just fine if it was mounted into a sauce Matthew.
- originally posted by Nicholasgav
Will the green of nasturtium stay vibrant? I'm concerned about losing color over the cook time.
Aroma, especially with hot and salty products.
I don't know why I didn't look here first, but I made the Carotene butter in MCAH this weekend, and 24 hours later, it will not separate, it's still completely emulsified... Is there any way to save it? Perhaps the overblending to break the emulsion?Thoughts?
Bring it to a simmer, it should separate after doing that for several minutes.
The equipment list should state that you need a juicer.
- originally posted by Leslie
When I removed the chilled butter from the saucepan, I found some interesting little round bits had formed on the bottom (see photo). I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this or might be able to explain what happened there. I also found the final product to be a bit lacking in salt--it seemed like all the salt was carried away in the solids during the clarification process. Has anyone experimented with adding back salt later in the process?
Not sure if this is going as planned. My post-blended butter/carrot juice mixture has been in an ice bath in the fridge for probably 3 hours. The surface was "relatively" solidified but still kind of soft. Went around the edge with a spatula expecting to see at least a small trace of liquid but found no liquid at all. So does this mean that maybe I didn't blend it long enough to break the emulsion? I blended it on high in my Vitamix for about 2.5 minutes. I made the mistake of using my smaller Vitamix container so I couldn't really check to see the droplets of fat that were supposed to be visible on the sides of the container after stopping. Should i dump this batch and start over? Thanks for any help
Whatever. I'll just go back to the Modernist Cuisine At Home version. I had better luck with that one.
Salt is non-soluble in pure fat, so once the emulsion breaks, any salt will stay with the watery part. If you want this to be salty, you'd have to mix the salt in after the fat is reasonably solid and it can structurally contain bits of salt. Then as long as you don't melt it completely, i'll be salty and good as a spread, for example.
I tried this recipe and had pretty good results. But clarifying the butter was truly time consuming, and not so scalable since I ended up losing plenty of real butter mass along the way.
It got me wondering whether Ghee would perhaps serve as a good/user-friendly alternative ?
I'm having very inconsistent results with this process. Sometimes everything works perfectly, others the emulsion simply won't break. Today I've had it in the vitamix for over 20 minutes with no luck. Tried to boil it with no luck either.
I'm having trouble breaking the emulsion in the blender... and as it's currently 11:00pm, I need to call it quits for now. I plan to store the emulsion overnight, reheat, and have at it again in the morning. Results TBA.
Dear Chefstep.
Worked this recipe with another vegetable juice also?Thx for your answer.
I just made this and I had some issues with breaking the emulsion (after all I'm using a hand blender). to solve this I reheated it, skimmed some of solids and then blend it again. unfortunately it wouldn't break and so I did the entire process (heat-skim-blend) again. after a while it finally broke (you can definitely tell when it does) and everything else went smoothly. I probably didn't get the optimal yield because of what happened but I got a 185g of carotene butter, for which I'm very happy considering I almost gave up...
Could the sugarcontent of the carrots have influence on the seperating process?
Ghee is just clarified butter.
What a dissapointment this was. Two attempts to make this over two nights. I followed instructions exactly and blended in my kitchen-aid for 20 mins. No deal. Reheated, blended another 5 min, nothing. I was really looking forward to making that cake for my fam
This is how I make this butter without any problems.
Juice carrots and strain juice. Bring butter to high heat. Blend unclarified hot butter and carrot juice for 5 minutes. The point of the 5 min blending is not to break the emulsion than to make it as emulsitied as posible. The break is not necessary for this metod. Than I chill it in ice and after that I put it in freezer. Stir every 10-15 mins. After 45 mins of freezing the emulsion will be very thick, stir one more time and pour it on a lot of layers of large thick paper kitchen towels(15 or more) placed in a clean plate. Cover with more towels, and lightly press. Leave it for 5-10 mins. Transfer the mass onto the new stack of paper towels, cover, press, and let it absorb all the liquid. Leave for another 5-10 mins. Repeat until all liquid is absorbed. It shouldnt take more than 2-4 times.
Works like a charm. No powerful blender needed for this proces, just a lot of towels. :-)
You can clarify the butter if you want but I dont mind it beeing unclerified.
I'm curious how a centrifuge might be incorporated into making carrot butter...
I centrifuged the juice from a juicer that keeps a lot of the pulp, strained through a fine-mesh strainer before blending with the clarified butter and had no problem breaking the emulsion in the blender. The recipe turned out just like the instructions.
Could this be applied to mint also?
I’ve made this several times with great success.. I use this with regular butter to make carrot cake cream cheese
frosting…Cream cheese frosting can become more stable due to the mixing method, which requires us to mix the butter and powdered sugar before adding the cream cheese. This allows the cream cheese to remain intact rather than softening up, which occurs when it is saturated with sugar. Smooth out the butter. Cut the cold butter into chunks so it’s easier to work with, and add it to the same bowl. There is no need to clean the bowl or attachments. Cream until smooth, with no visible lumps. Add about a third of the powdered sugar (no need to measure exactly) and mix on low speed. Once combined, add the next third and repeat the process. With the final addition, mix in the vanilla and a pinch of salt—cream cheese is already salted, so adjust to taste at the end. If using a hand mixer, this part takes the longest; I use a scraping motion to help it come together faster.
Add cream cheese and smooth out the buttercream.Add the smooth, cold cream cheese to the butter-sugar mixture and mix on low until the lumps disappear. Use a spatula to finish blending—the frosting will thin out slightly as the cream cheese is incorporated. Avoid overmixing to prevent the frosting from becoming too thin
I try to make another batch without the carrot one butter to so the center is yellow warm buttered carrot cream cheese.
a bit confused by the instructions. it calls for 500g of butter but only calls for 250 of clarified butter to combine with the carrot juice. what happens to the rest of the butter? did I miss something?
Hello Darren, great question. In hindsight we could have worded that a bit better. Basically all thats important is you need equal parts clarified butter to the weight of the carrot juice. The average yield you might expect when clarifying butter is about 75% of the original weight but that really does vary from person to person. I was assuming it would be better to undershoot that amount (375g) in case someone over found them selves with less yield, hence deciding to go with 250 g.
We will add that to our list of things to update but the technique works very well. Hope this helps!
