Recipes, guides and kitchen know-how. Mostly useful, occasionally silly.
Garlic Butter Recipe - Five Minutes, One Bowl, Everything Tastes Better
Soft butter, fresh garlic crushed straight in, parsley and a squeeze of lemon. One bowl, five minutes, no cooking. Roll it into a log for the fridge or freezer, or spread it on a baguette for garlic bread.
Rate this recipe
- Prep5 min
- Soften1 hr
- CookNone
- Makes150g
- Calories~90
Calories are approximate, per tablespoon (about 15g), worked out from the ingredients. Brands and portion sizes vary.
Butter, garlic, a fork and five minutes. The most powerful combination in my kitchen.
It turns a sad baguette into garlic bread. It turns a plain steak into a restaurant steak. It turns a jacket potato into a reason to live.
It has also, on one occasion, turned me into a man eating half a loaf of garlic bread in a supermarket car park. We don't talk about that.
This garlic butter recipe is one bowl, four ingredients and no cooking. Soft butter, crushed garlic, parsley and a squeeze of lemon. That's it.
It's also what proper garlic bread is built on. That's getting its own post very soon, because it won't stop asking.
I read through a stack of versions, from French home cooks to people who test recipes for a living, kept what they agree on and pinched the clever bits. Eesha, who is technically a garlic bulb, has given it her blessing. She was a bit emotional about it.
Now showing
Short on time? Here's the whole thing in 36 seconds. Less time than the butter takes to soften. Considerably less.
Starring Oliver and the sad shop tub, Aaron's bent fork and Erin's marshmallow appeal. Still denied.
Is garlic bread even Italian?
Sort of. And also not at all.
The idea goes back a long way. In Venice in the 1400s, people fried stale bread in oil and rubbed it with garlic, which probably led to bruschetta - from bruscare, "to toast".
Then Italians who moved to America in the late 1800s and early 1900s couldn't find their bread or their olive oil. What they could find was French bread and butter. So they used those instead, and garlic bread as we know it was born.
Tasting Table's food historians point out you'll struggle to find it on a menu in Italy. Which is a bit like discovering chicken tikka masala isn't on every menu in Delhi.
Meanwhile the French had been quietly mashing garlic and parsley into butter for centuries and spooning it into snail shells. They call it beurre d'escargot, snail butter. Erin would like it noted she will eat the butter but not the snail.
So the butter is French, the bread is Italian-American, and we're British and we'll have both, thanks.
Erin has proposed one marshmallow per clove. Motion denied. She is appealing to a higher court, which is also me.
What you need
For the butter (makes about 150g)
- 125g butter, softened. Salted is fine. If it's unsalted, add a quarter to half a teaspoon of salt.
- 3 garlic cloves, peeled. Fresh ones - not a jar, not a tube. They taste of jar and tube.
- 2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. Flat-leaf has more flavour than curly. Curly will do in a pinch.
- A squeeze of lemon juice, about a teaspoon. It wakes the whole thing up.
- A few twists of black pepper
Optional extras
Two optional extras. Isaac counts the cheese twice.
- 40g finely grated parmesan, beaten into the butter. Not vegetarian, so swap in a vegetarian hard cheese if that matters at your table.
- A pinch of chilli flakes, if someone at the table thinks garlic isn't exciting enough. That someone is me. I'd put chilli in a trifle, and I'm not ruling it out.
Kit
- A garlic press - ours crushes a clove straight into the bowl and comes with a free silicone roll-tube peeler. No press? A fine grater or the flat of a big knife works.
- A chopping board and a sharp knife for the parsley
- A mixing bowl and a fork or wooden spoon
- Baking paper or cling film for rolling a log
How to make the butter
Step 1 - Soften the butter
- Take the butter out of the fridge about an hour before you start. It should dent easily when you press it.
- Put it in a bowl and beat it with a fork or wooden spoon until it's pale, creamy and smooth. A damp tea towel under the bowl stops it skating off.
Soft, not melted. Melted butter goes greasy and the garlic sinks to the bottom. Like me in a hot tub.
Forgot to take it out? Cut it into small cubes and it'll soften in a fraction of the time.
Step 2 - Crush the garlic straight in
- Peel the cloves. If any have a green shoot in the middle, pull it out - it tastes bitter.
- Crush the garlic straight into the butter with a garlic press. Scrape the bits off the bottom of the press too - that's the good stuff.
- No press? Grate it on the finest side of a grater, or crush it to a paste with a pinch of salt under the flat of a big knife.
Crushing beats chopping here. A paste melts into the butter evenly, so you get garlic in every bite rather than the odd raw chunk ambushing you. If you want the full rundown, here's every way to get a clove ready for the pan.
And if peeling is the bit you hate, the ten-second trick with a silicone tube will change your life. Mildly. It's garlic, not therapy.
Step 3 - Herbs, lemon, taste
- Chop the parsley finely and stir it in with the lemon juice, a few twists of black pepper and any extras.
- Add salt only if your butter was unsalted.
- Taste it. It should be properly garlicky. Raw garlic mellows a lot once it hits heat, so if it's for garlic bread, it's meant to be a bit loud right now.
That's your garlic and herb butter. Chives work instead of parsley, or a little thyme. Rosemary works too, but go easy - it's the loud uncle of herbs.
Step 4 - Roll it, chill it
- Spoon the butter onto a sheet of baking paper or cling film in a rough line.
- Roll it into a log and twist the ends like a sweet wrapper.
- Chill it in the fridge until firm. Then slice off a coin whenever you need one.
Making garlic bread straight away? Skip the rolling and use it soft. Raw garlic and butter belong in the fridge, not on the side - more on that below.
Crush the garlic into soft butter, then taste before you stop. Every good version agrees on this: the garlic has to be a paste and the butter has to be soft enough to take it. Get those two right and everything else is decoration. Including the parsley. Don't tell the parsley.
Its best job: garlic bread
Be honest, this butter was always heading for a baguette. It knows. The baguette knows.
It's what goes next to a proper Bologna-style lasagne, and the only sensible way to mop up a pot of chicken cooked with forty cloves. Garlic with garlic. Bold. Correct.
The full garlic bread method is getting its own post very soon. The loaf asked for its own room. We're allowing it.
Other things it makes better
Things a coin of this butter improves, in no particular order:
- A steak resting on the board
- A jacket potato. Aaron says no comment.
- Mushrooms on toast
- Baked white fish
- Fresh pasta with a handful of parmesan
- Corn on the cob, rolled straight in it
Keeping it, freezing it, and the boring-but-important bit
Recipes online say anything from four days to two weeks in the fridge. I go with the cautious end. I'm the same with any garlic that's been chopped, crushed or blitzed - it's had a hard day. Four days in the fridge, then into the freezer. Butter that's been sat with raw garlic in the fridge for two weeks is not a recipe. It's a science project.
Can you freeze it? Yes, and it's brilliant. Wrap the log well, write the date on it, and slice coins straight off it from frozen. A month in the freezer keeps it tasting fresh.
Lara says the frozen log has lovely posture. She is not wrong.
If it goes wrong
Butter went greasy and separated? It got melted instead of softened.
Fix: pop the bowl in the fridge until it firms up a bit, then beat it again until it comes back together. Eesha has given the microwave a detention.
Garlic too harsh? Too many cloves, or there were green shoots in the middle.
Fix: drop to two cloves and pull out any shoots. For a gentler flavour, warm the butter very slightly (not melted) and stir the garlic through for a couple of minutes. Or just bake it. Heat calms it right down.
Log too soft to roll? The butter is still warm from all that beating.
Fix: chill the bowl for 15 minutes, then roll. It needs a lie down. Don't we all.
Frozen log won't slice? It's frozen solid, which was rather the point.
Fix: run a sharp knife under the hot tap, dry it, and slice coins straight off. Brute force is not a technique.
Butter tearing the bread? It's still too cold to spread.
Fix: let it soften a bit longer and push it in gently with a spoon or clean fingers. Fingers are faster. Nobody's watching.
Guests arriving and you smell of garlic? You made it at the last minute.
Fix: make the log the day before, or up to a month ahead in the freezer, so your hands have recovered by the time anyone rings the doorbell.
That's it. Soft butter, crushed garlic, a bit of green, a squeeze of lemon.
And if anyone asks where half the garlic bread went, it was Isaac. It's always Isaac.
Now go and butter something.
