Butter

I love butter.

No, I’m not gonna marry it.

I do eat way too much butter and that stems from my time in haute cuisine. Everything had butter in it. I would keep a 50-gallon pot of it going at all times in my fine dining kitchens. The butter remained perfectly clarified with just the pilot lights of the stove keeping it warm. The sauté station had a 3-gallon Bain marie just for coating the pans before placing it on a burner. Hollandaise and variations of the egg sauce such as Sauce Charon and Bearnaise dotted my menu.

We used a lot of butter.

Whether it was whipped and piped, or melted, or used as a binder for some French sauces, butter is prominent in pretty much all cooking.

I eat eggs for breakfast occasionally.

Cooked in butter.

I used to eat EggBeaters because I thought it was less harmful to my high cholesterol concerns, but I have switched back to real eggs because evidently it is a push between the two options. Besides, I don’t eat eggs every day anyway. But when I do, I like them the worst way you can have them: over easy. Cooked in butter.

I like butter on my toast, English muffins, vegetables, potatoes, soups, sauces, pastas, and even on a warm danish.

I tried using margarine like I Can’t Believe I Ate This Butter and none of them are anything other than oil and water mixed together with coloring and flavoring.

No thanks.

So I switched back to butter.

When I was a fresh-faced prep cook for a pancake restaurant, I would be tasked with whipping the butter. Actually, we extended the butter with blocks of margarine. This process would infuse air into the butter mixture, tripling its volume.

Genius.

However, at most restaurants, margarine or some other “butter-like” chemically developed product is used.

Food cost.

I also eat way too much mayonnaise, another egg product. Quite frankly, my numbers on my last A1C looked surprisingly good in all categories, including cholesterol.

If you can tell the difference between an egg hatched by a free-range chicken and a caged-in one (other than the size and color), I’m impressed.

Hard-boiled eggs are good, just not by themselves. I put them in pasta dishes, potato salad, macaroni salad, and of course, you can’t make a great spinach salad without fanning a sliced egg on top. I don’t get the eating a hard-boiled egg by itself thing, even with a little salt and pepper. Your mouth gets dry as a desert and anything you drink to help alleviate the condition just worsens it.

No thanks.

Even cold beer, the universal lubricant, will not help. And if a cold brewski doesn’t help, it is beyond saving.

Omelettes are awesome and I once worked part-time at a tiny little three-table casino located across the street from the world-famous Stardust Casino and Sportsbook. The chef there taught me how to make the best Yorkshire pudding (another egg dish) you ever tasted. The little casino was called the El Morocco and the chef would place his raw eggs into one of those old milk shake machines. He would whip the eggs into a foam, spread it out on the buttered flat grill, top with whatever ingredients, and fold it gently into a spongy, light-as-air breakfast treat.

Genius.

Stay well.