Herb Butter & Board Dressings

I come from a family of serious meat eaters, especially red meat.  I love a good New York strip steak, but there is nothing quite like a beef tenderloin cooked out on the grill.  

My parents bought this beauty at The Fresh Market.  My husband and I like to season our meat with kosher salt, garlic salt, and coarse ground black pepper.  

After loving the herb butter that was served on our flat iron steak at the Bistro at Biltmore last week, I knew I wanted to make herb butter tonight for our filet.  

We added our three favorite herbs and some sea salt to as stick of softened butter, then put in the refrigerator to chill until the meat was cooked.  

I can't wait to get home, where I have some candy molds, and start making herb butter in the shape of little hearts.  

Served up, it might not have looked too pretty tonight, but taste-wise, it was amazing!

For the past year, we have been making a lot of board dressings for our steak, but I think I prefer the herb butter.

Herb Butter

Ingredients

1/2 C (1 stick) salted butter -- room temperature
fresh basil -- minced
fresh rosemary -- minced
fresh sage -- minced
Pinch of kosher or sea salt
Optional - pinch of coarse ground black better

Directions

In a small bowl, add a pinch of salt and desired amount of basil, rosemary, and sage to softened butter.  Stir well to combine, then cover and refrigerate until ready to use. 

Recipe Notes

We used about equal amounts of basil, rosemary, and sage.

You could roll your butter into a log in plastic wrap or parchment paper before refrigerating. 

This herb butter would be great on steak, chicken, fish, bread or vegetables.  With the addition of minced garlic, it would make for some amazing garlic bread!

Board Dressings

If you cannot eat dairy, a board dressing is a great way to add a lot of flavor to your meat.  I bought my husband a bamboo cutting board with a drip groove from amazon for Christmas, just so he could make board dressings, a technique we learned from Adam Perry Lang's Charred & Scruffed.    

My husband minces rosemary, basil, and sage before adding about 5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of kosher salt, and a pinch of coarse ground pepper to the cutting board.  Sometimes we also add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic.  As my husband cuts each slice of steak, he rubs it around in the board dressing.  My mom likes to add some fresh lemon juice to her board dressings.  

We used a board dressing at Christmas for our standing rib roast.

On New Year's Day, we made a board dressing out of olive oil, honey, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper for our honey & sage roasted pork.  You can view the recipe here.

How do you dress up your meat?


Linked to: Gluten-Free & DIY Tuesday