Sorghum Compound Butter and a Smoked Chicken with Sorghum Herb Butter

Buttah!  Who doesn’t love melted butter on a steaming hot baked potato or Maître d’Hôtel Butter topping a beautiful fillet of beef that has been perfectly seared and cooked to perfection?  Butter is one ingredient that I will never give up in my cooking because it really adds to the complex flavors in so many dishes.

One of the butters that I do use in my kitchen is Kerrygold Irish Butter, so when Kerrygold asked me to enter a contest using their new Naturally Soft Butters in a few cooking ideas, I was happy to do so.

These new butters are made from the milk of the same grass fed cows that produce their regular European-style butter.  If the cows are milked in the summer months there is a higher milkfat content, which helps create these soft butters.  It is then churned by an all natural process that allows for the soft and spreadable consistency without additives or stabilizers (and you know we avoid processed food as much as possible).

In addition to the regular soft butter, they also have a reduced fat version which has 25% less fat and 50% less sodium, so we were definitely interested in that product.  If I can have essentially the same flavor, with less calories, fat and sodium, then that butter just might become a staple in my fridge.

As you may know, this softer butter cannot be used when baking, so I decided to mix in one of our favorite ingredients to make a delicious compound butter that you can use in several ways.

I made a Sorghum Butter with the Reduced Fat Irish Butter to create a buttery spread with just a hint of sweetness.  Sorghum is a natural sweetener that is lighter and more delicate than molasses.  It is used quite a bit in southern dishes.  It is perfect for topping hot and fluffy biscuits right out of the oven or a toasted cornmeal muffin.  It is also incredibly good stirred into cooked steel cut oats or stone ground grits for breakfast.  I like that it adds great flavor without the addition of too many calories.

Since we enjoyed the Sorghum Butter so much, I took the full fat Naturally Soft Irish Butter and once again mixed it with sorghum.  However, this time I added some fresh herbs to create a Sorghum Herb Butter and we used it as a basting butter for an organic chicken and then smoked the chicken.  This soft butter is a perfect medium to easily bring these flavors together and create a smooth spread that can be applied in the cavity of the bird, under the skin and on the outer skin of the poultry.  You need the full fat butter to get the desired results and the perfectly browned skin.  You could also use this method for your Thanksgiving turkey. 🙂

The chicken was beautifully browned and incredibly juicy

The butterfat produces a golden brown finish outside, while the compound butter layered under the skin of the poultry penetrates deep to infuse a remarkable flavor.  This combination of flavors made for an incredibly moist and succulent bird.

I hope you enjoy these ideas for using the new Kerrygold butters and I am sure that you can come up with some great tips or suggestions of your own.

Have a great week!