I love tarragon. I particularly love using it on salmon, as it seems to make the rich oiliness of salmon disappear and create a seriously tasty dish. And, it’s just as good with chicken….
I kept on seeing recipes for lovely herb butters over the years, food writers say how great they are for adding flavour, but I thought they were too fussy and I really couldn’t be bothered to make any. Until, I realised that I could make one big batch, freeze it and literally have enough to keep me going for 6 months so I would only have to make it twice a year (I double the quantities in the recipe below).
You can use this herb butter in some of my other recipes on my website;
I also use this butter to flavour boiled (and drained) new potatoes and I smear it over grilled or barbecued steaks - so ridiculously good.
I bought a small tarragon plant from the supermarket a couple of years ago, re-potted into a larger pot and left it in the garden. Amazingly (for me) it grew and grew. By autumn it’s full of beautiful smelling aniseed leaves which I cut back (before they die off for winter) to make this fab herb butter to keep me going all winter. The plant comes back to life in spring every year, how good is that?!
Miraculous ingredients: unsalted butter, fresh tarragon
Tarragon, parsley and garlic butter
Ingredients
125g unsalted butter
1 clove of garlic approx 25g fresh flat parsley (the small bags vary in size, 25g or 30g, between the supermarkets) approx 25g fresh tarragon (the small bags vary in size, 20g or 30g, between the supermarkets)
Method
Cut the garlic into quarters and blitz for 10 seconds in a mini chopper or food processor to create tiny pieces.
Remove the stalks from the parsley and add to the mini chopper. If the tarragon stalks are soft, add the whole pieces of tarragon to the mini chopper. If the tarragon stalks are too tough, remove the leaves and add just these to the mini chopper. Blitz for 10 seconds to finely chop.
Cut the butter into small cubes and add half of them into the mini chopper and blitz for 10 seconds. Use a small spatula to scrape the butter away from the sides of the mini chopper and blitz again – you might have to repeat this a few times until the butter is blended into the herb and garlic mix.
Add the rest of the butter and keep blitzing and scraping the butter into the mix until it is all blended together.
Scrape the herb butter out of the processor onto a large sheet of parchment paper. Carefully roll the butter using the surrounding paper to create a sausage shape. Twist the paper at each end to create a seal and put it in the freezer.
It’s easy to hack of pieces you need from the frozen ‘sausage’ when for a recipe without having to defrost the whole lot.
Preparation time 5 minutes, blitzing 10 minutes