Boiling Butter

[jaymer]

hi

basically, we're trying to make a butter/milk mixture to pour into mashed potatoes. we also add granulated garlic. We used to only use butter, but started adding milk and that made us have to warm this together. We've never tried half-n-half.

i'm wondering about melting the mixture... if it boils heavily but doesn't burn (cause the cook gets distracted, lets say) does it mess it up? I don't notice that "its broke" or it appears a greasy mess, etc. We use Yukon Golds and we consciously do not 'over mash' them. I notice differences in batches of potatoes and wonder if it comes down to how the butter/milk is initially handled.

I recently saw an Alton Brown episode on butter and I think he said it should never go above 140deg. I'm sure that if its boiling heavily its hotter than 140, so I don't know what to believe.

thx

[Qwerty]

If you boil the butter in the milk it will almost certainly break. The best bet would be to heat up the milk seperately and add it to the taters, then fold in cold cubed butter do the desired amount. This, in essence, emulsifies the butter into the potatoes. It's the best way.

Edited February 26, 2009 by Qwerty (log)

[paulraphael]

The standard way to do this is to mount the butter in the liquid (beurre monté). It works best with a small amount of liquid relative to the butter. You add butter only as fast as it will incorporate and emulsify. There's no limit to how much butter you can add, because it's already an emusion. But too much liquid and the butter will break regardless of heat.

Boiling will definitely break a simple beurre monté. In general you don't want it to get above 180F.

For the potatoes, I think you'll get better results adding the butter and milk seperately. Butter first, whole and unmelted. Mix it in as above, as if the potatoes were your liquid. The butter will stay emulsified, if you mix as it melts. The amount of butter you put in depends only on how rich you want the potatoes to be.

If you want to use garlic the best way to get the flavor into the potatoes is through the butter. Mince the garlic and work it into softened, solid butter. This is called a compound butter and is delcious by itself. The aromatic compounds in the garlic are highly soluble in fat ... much moreso than in water based liquids.

Add milk at the end, purely to adjust the texture. Use hot milk, and only whisk in a little at a time. It goes a long way.

Edited February 26, 2009 by paulraphael (log)

[jaymer]

we tried some today by melting butter under a lower heat, and then adding salt and granulated garlic. this produced an oily substance that wanted to separate - with the spice sinking and always wanting to settle to the botton of the pan. I mixed it as best I could before adding to the potatoes, gently mashing as we went.

Then we added warm milk and gently mashed some more. I didn't notice any difference in taste or texture. This was added to 25 lb of Yukon Golds.

Originally, we put cold sticks of butter into a pan - back when we made 5lb batches. But you'd really have to work it hard and that was releasing too much starch into the potatoes. Since we wanted to work them less and be more gentle, we decided to start melting the butter. The milk came about for texture.

Somehow it just got combined to one step and now my question is about the effect of the butter/milk mixture boiling and breaking... and will that affect the final product?