Spring Chive Butter

This butter captures Spring for me- fresh, delicate, floral, herby… I walked out in our garden and saw these gorgeous purple chive flowers in full bloom. The flowers are so fleeting, but making this butter let’s me enjoy them as long as possible. The pops of pastel purple in the butter make me so happy, but if you don’t have access to fresh chive flowers, you can substitute more green chives and it will still be amazing. The butter adds such a lovely dimension to so many dishes like eggs, toast, soup, risotto, etc.

Ingredients

4-5 chive flowers (optional, substitute with 2 tbsp fresh green chives if you do not have chive flowers)

4 oz unslated butter, at room temperature

1 clove garlic, crushed or minced

2 tbsp fresh green chives, chopped finely

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Directions

1. Prepare the chive flowers: Soak the blossoms in water for a few minutes, then gently shake them to dislodge any small bugs or debris. Then, gently pull the flowers apart, separating the individual flowers from the base. Place the individual flowers on a paper towel so they can dry while you work on the rest of the ingredients. Discard the flower base and stem (generally, the chive flowers are on a stem that is too tough to enjoy eating.)

2. Place 1 tbsp of butter, garlic, green chives, and salt in a small pan. Warm this over low heat, stirring constantly, until the butter is melted and the garlic and chives are fragrant. This should take about 1 minute. Remove from the heat as soon as it it fragrant since we do not want to cook the garlic and chives, but just warm them up and bring out the flavors.

3. Add the remaining 3 tbsp of butter to the pan. Use a rubber spatula to mix the room temperature butter into the warm butter. Keep mashing them together until it looks like a uniform mixture. Then, gently mix in the chive flowers from Step 1.

4. Store in an airtight glass jar or wrapped in parchment in the fridge (if using within a week or so) or freezer (if keeping it for longer). I like wrapping it in parchment, roughly shaped like a log. When I want to use it, I just slice off what I need.