Coffee Class

Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

Dunno if you heard, but apparently putting butter in your coffee is <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/putting-butter-your-coffee---4976109">a thing</a> now. This is not that. In fact, it’s the exact opposite: It’s putting coffee in your butter. And mmm, boy, is it delicious.The recipe is unbelievably simple: Pack butter and whole coffee beans together in a sous vide bag (or a pot with a lid), cook at [c 90] for 3 to 4 hours, then strain and cool. It works because the oil in the butter readily absorbs fat-soluble aromatics and coffee oils from the beans, but it picks up none of the bitter-tasting compounds (because those molecules are water soluble rather than fat soluble). The result is a robust infusion that has all the creamy goodness of butter and a warm, toasty coffee flavor—the best of both worlds. We cook our Coffee Butter for 3 hours, but feel free to shorten the time some if you prefer a milder flavor. Then stick the stuff on a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/coffee-butter-steak-and-spinach">sous vide steak</a>, slather it over a homemade <a href="english-muffin">English muffin</a>, or bake into your favorite <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/banana-bread">banana bread</a> or shortbread cookies. Hey, you could even try it in your coffee. Let us know how that goes.