If you’d care to join us, I would like us all to try a homework project: making Heston’s Acidulated Butter Recipe from Heston at Home.
We don’t plan to be as comprehensive as our heroes over at Covalent Cooking, but our copy of Heston at Home has provided lots of delicious meals (and a few moments of hair-tearing frustration) over the past 12 months. This is kind of our way of celebrating it’s 1-&-a-bit year anniversary.
Fellow Hestonthusiast Andy once noted how many of the Heston at Home’s recipes sneakily appear much simpler than they really are. Heston’s Cheese Toastie recipe (a snack) lists only a few steps, but its 3 separate fillings take around half a day to prepare. One recipe lists “Brined and Rinsed Pork Belly (p164)” as an ingredient, nearly 24 hours of extra work.
Same for the risotto recipes in Heston at Home. Relatively simple to make… provided you’ve already prepared Heston’s Acidulated Butter recipe, which is what we’re going to do today.
First time we made this it was a complete disaster. Fingers crossed we get it right this time.
SUMMARY
Recipe: Heston’s Acidulated Butter
Special Equipment: None
Special Ingredients: None
Time: 1 hour (approx)
Cost: £4+ depending on quality of wine used
Serves: Many
Difficulty: Moderate
COOKING
Step 1: Onion Infusion & reduction
Heston says the onion should be thinly sliced. We just ran ours through a grater, hoping greater surface area should mean more flavour transfer.
Please, please open a window for this next bit. Boiling vinegar for 20 minutes absolutely reeks. Last time I think we didn’t reduce by enough and the mixture split. This time we aimed for a thin syrup. A gastrique, if you will (Ta, Gary 😉 ).
Step 2: Whisking in the butter
You’re asked to whisk in the butter “a little at a time”. Our other mistake last time around was probably to translate this instruction as “chuck in 4 big, fridge-cold lumps”.
Really try to ensure your butter is cubed, and room temperature if possible. We added ours in about 8 portions, wincing for the 6 or 7 minutes that we scraped a metal whisk round our Teflon wok.
Step 3: Sieving and Chilling
After resting for 20 minutes the mixture is pushed through a sieve. There’ surprisingly little solid left. We attribute this to having grated the onion. The mix dribbled about a tablespoon of vinegary juice – perhaps the emulsion had split / leaked slightly?
We’ve wrapped ours into a neat, slightly wrinkled log. (At the rear. Alongside our vanilla and spiced chilli butters, also from the book). If you want to do this you’ll have to chill it for a bit first.
VERDICT
And that’s it. Don’t be tempted to taste this on its own, the strong vinegar flavour will be quite revolting.
We’ll be making Heston’s Beetroot Spelt Risotto recipe with this acidulated butter one night soon.
Let us know if you’ve tried making the butter, and if you made the risotto too we’d love some pointers.
I’d never really thought to bother making the acidulated butter before; good effort. Might try it.
Grating onion can be a problem – it makes it much more moist than slicing (some cell walls getting buggered has something to do with it I’m sure).
And: treat yourself to a silicone-coated whisk or two. I have almost completely non-stick things so can’t bear to scrape away with metal utensils.
Very intrigued to know how the risotto turns out, do say!
Hey Gary! 🙂
You’re dead right about the onion. But after I’d screwed up so badly with the first attempt I was ready to try anything to get it right second time round.
It’s foolish to ignore your advice so I will definitely follow your silicone whisk tip, though I hope we all don’t get sick of the sight of it, like that bloody red spatula I always use! 🙂
The risotto: I’d say not worth it. Maybe I’d got something wrong but it a bit too acidulated (read: tasted of nowt but vinegar). I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with making a risotto the normal way (save the crucifying boredom). Just posted the risotto results though, would be very interested to hear your thoughts
I have a just-as-loved red spatula because it’s so versatile.
It’s a shame you struggle with the risotto – there’s a few key points you need to get it right. I had a duck risotto last night, very strong-tasting. I’ll be posting it in a day or two.
Dab the grated onion on good paper towel. Problem sorted.
Barry that is a brilliant suggestion!
I’m trying to “learn” risottos, and I think our next one is a weeknight trial of the Pea Risotto recipe from Family Food. Will definitely be featuring this speedy tip. Thanks for reading.