Next Level Bar Techniques | Fat-Washing with Carrot Butter + other Vegetable Butters!
Fat-washing isn't a new thing in the bartending world! We've seen butters made from all sorts of fat from bacon, duck & beurre noisette all to add flavour as well as texture to spirits then eventually into our final cocktails. Here at Cocktails For You we're always trying to discover & search for new ideas that could push the envelope of cocktails around the world. We've stumbled upon this recipe from ChefSteps that allows you to create carrot butter that you can then use to fat-wash your spirits. Find the full article & recipe below:
This carotene butter tastes more like a carrot than a carrot and more like butter than butter. That’s because skimming off the carrot’s cellulose (the insoluble polysaccharides that make up the cell walls of plants) strips away any watery, fibrous flavor normally found in a raw carrot, leaving only the carrot’s purest essence: sweet, slightly nutty, and, of course, bright orange. Likewise, skimming whey off melted butter yields a pure butterfat flavor—creamy, smooth, and rich.
Carotene butter is a simple and versatile preparation. Serve it cold as a condiment, melt it into soups, or use it to saute oyster mushrooms or scallops to impart color. The technique actually works with any pigment-rich plant food, such as tomatoes or microgreens, so use your imagination to come up with other variations, and be sure to share your results with us!
This recipe works in part because carotene—the pigment found in carrots that turns them bright orange—is fat soluble. So when you cook clarified butter and fresh carrot juice together, all that orange pigment readily dissolves, yielding a colorful liquid that, when cooled, becomes a beautiful bright-orange butter.
Our development chef Nick Gavin first made carotene butter with a centrifuge, as part of a dinner for Modernist Cuisine. But for ChefSteps, he wanted to create an easy stovetop version. “In this recipe, you will notice that the butter is clarified, blended with the carrot juice, and then re-clarified,” Nick explains. “That’s because milk proteins normally found in butter will act as emulsifiers, making the separation of water, cellulose, and milk solids difficult when you add the carrot juice in Step 5. So the key is to start with clarified butter and go from there.” With Nick’s technique, you can make colorful butters easily at home, without any special equipment. Equipment
Timing -1 hr
Yield - 210g
1st Step
6 Carrots
Remove ends and peel carrots.
Juice, and pass through a fine mesh sieve. Reserve 250 g.
Keep extra juice in the freezer for other uses.
2nd Step 500g Butter
On low heat, melt butter until a layer of milk solids forms on the surface.
TIP: Gently rake the bottom of the pot with a spatula to encourage all the whey to float to the top. Don’t mix.
Using a ladle or a spoon, carefully and gently remove the whey that has gathered on the surface.
The reserved fat is called clarified butter. This will hold in your fridge for weeks or in your freezer for a year. 3rd Step
250g Butter (Clarified)
250g Carrot juice (Fresh)
While the butter is still hot, blend ingredients on high until the emulsion breaks.
NOTE: The liquids will initially emulsify and thicken in the blender, due to the cold carrot juice being mixed into the fat from the butter. Eventually, the friction from blending on high will cause the emulsion to heat and separate. This takes about two minutes in our blender. To confirm that the emulsion has separated fully, stop the blender occasionally and watch for fat droplets to form as the liquid runs down the sides of the blender. You should be able to see that the liquid has thinned at this point as well.