From Forage. Gather. Feast.
photo by Marla Aufmuth
You can infuse cream with seaweed and make your own butter out of it. The most amazing seaweed butter I’ve tasted was made by the chef Matthew Kammerer of Harbor House Inn in Mendocino. He explained this sorcery by way of holding a jar of dried sea lettuce to my nose; it had a sublime, rich, truffle-like scent. This is what he uses to infuse his butter, and now I do too. Note, he’s a Michelin-starred chef who makes cultured butter and his process is way more involved than mine, so I adapted it into a Butter 101 version. You can add dulse and wakame and substitute other seaweeds, but sea lettuce is my favorite for infusing cream for homemade butter. Seaweed butter adds fairy dust to all bread. Try it with seaweed bread and salt-lemon preserved anchovies from Forage. Gather. Feast.
Photo by Maria Finn
Makes roughly one 5-inch log
1/3 cup (tightly packed) dried sea lettuce (Ulva)
1 pint grass-fed, organic heavy cream
2 to 4 cups ice water
Use Flaky sea salt or Seaweed Gomasio for finishing
Soak the sea lettuce in the cream overnight in the fridge.
Strain the cream through a tightly woven colander, pressing it all through with the back of a spoon. Allow small seaweed pieces to flow in the cream for aesthetics and added flavor. Compost the soaked seaweed.
Pour the cream into a blender or food processor and blend for 3 to 6 minutes. It will turn from whipped cream to a separated, beaded consistency—anyone who has ruined whipped cream by beating it too long will recognize this. Keep whipping it. Eventually the liquid will separate. Stop the blender, scrape the sides, then blend more.
Strain off the buttermilk. (If desired, you can save that for other things, like a seaweed buttermilk dressing or to use in biscuits.)
Put the solid butter in a clean glass bowl with space for the ice water.
Now rinse the butter. This takes out the casein, a protein in milk, that can cause your butter to go rancid. (Commercially produced butter is washed with either a chlorinated rinse or lactic acid for preservation.) Washing also makes the texture more velvety. To rinse, pour 1/2 cup of the ice water into the butter. Move the butter around, or “agitate” it, and then pour off the liquid. Do this a few more times, until the ice water runs clear.
Put your butter in a sieve and let all the liquid drain. Then work out the remaining liquid. You can do this several ways—put it into a cheesecloth and squeeze, or use a large spoon to rub over the surface, pressing it out. Or squeeze with your bare hands.
Once it has a thick consistency with no visible liquid beading, store in a covered ramekin in the fridge[CW1] or use right away. Or, using plastic wrap, roll it into a log, and store in the fridge. To freeze, store in a small mason jar, leaving 1/4 inch of space at the top.
When ready to use, slice the butter off into rounds like you’d find at a fancy restaurant and garnish with a few flakes of sea salt or gomasio.
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