How Does the World Eat Butter?

Thank you Trade for sponsoring today’s episode!
Visit drinktrade.com/Beryl to sign-up and save $15 on select plans — get a free bag of roasted-to-order coffee with select subscriptions.

Thank you so much to Emilia, Stephanie, Katie, Marit, and Claudia for sharing your stories with us!

The artist behind me is Celeste Laster! Check out her page on my website: https://www.beryl.nyc/index.php/celeste-laster/

Where to buy the Pizzoccheri buckwheat pasta online: https://a.co/d/8lfwdzL

When I made cookies for the first time, I did Thumbprint Cookies in my Memory Meals episode: https://youtu.be/S08C01O778A?t=815

RECIPES
Butter Tarts: https://www.beryl.nyc/index.php/2024/03/14/butter-tarts/
Kochkäse: https://www.beryl.nyc/index.php/2024/03/14/kochkase/
Ginger Shortbread: https://www.beryl.nyc/index.php/2024/03/14/ginger-shortbread/
Boterkoek: https://www.beryl.nyc/index.php/2024/03/14/boterkoek/
Pizzoccheri: https://www.beryl.nyc/index.php/2024/03/14/pizzoccheri/

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
02:10 German Kochkäse (Cooked Cheese)
04:50 Trying Kochkäse
07:57 Italian Pizzoccheri (Buckwheat Pasta)
10:44 Trying Pizzoccheri
12:29 Dutch Boterkoek (Butter Cake)
15:16 Trying Boterkoek
17:25 Canadian Butter Tarts
21:28 Trying Butter Tarts
23:49 New Zealand Ginger Shortbread
26:49 Trying Ginger Shortbread

#butter #butterrecipes #aroundtheworld #passtheplate

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Beryl Shereshewsky
115 East 34th Street FRNT 1
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– In Elaine Khosrova’s book “Butter: A Rich History”, she explains how the discovery of butter possibly happened. Ooh! (magical music) The year is 8,000 BC and we’re somewhere in ancient Africa. A sheep, this is the sheep, has been walking with its herder with a bag of milk

Strapped to its back for many hours. The herder, thirsty, reaches to have a drink of milk only to find the jostling of the animal’s movements has caused it to be transformed into what we know now as butter. Through the centuries, butter has become a staple in cultures all around the world.

So today, I am making five butter dishes from five countries to see how transformative this one ingredient really can be. And no, I’m not making any croissants, although there is a lot of baking today. So I’m gonna need a cup of coffee. And I wanna thank Trade Coffee for sponsoring today’s episode.

Many of you know that I’ve always been a fan of instant coffee, but Reg and I recently got this French press and, I’m an at-home coffee barista. I wasn’t sure what kind of coffee I really liked, and when I found Trade, this coffee subscription service, they helped me find the grinds that are best suited to my taste. The coffee that I’m having is from Joe Coffee. The beans are Brazilian origin, but it’s actually ground here in New York City.

Trade Coffee has relationships with over 55 roasters so you can have craft coffee from all around the United States at home. And every bag ships within 48 hours of roasting and you can decide whether you want whole bean or pre-ground. It always arrives fresh and it always smells amazing.

Since this is a butter episode, I’m gonna try ghee coffee because I’ve seen it all over my socials. I’m also adding sugar. I don’t know if that’s allowed, but I’m not like a black coffee kind of person. It’s actually not that bad. It’s pretty nice. There’s like a real nuttiness to this coffee, and then the ghee has a fat sweetness to it. I definitely feel ready to get into my baking. (chuckles) If you wanna try Trade Coffee, you can get a free bag with your subscription using my link, drinktrade.com/beryl.

The link is on the screen, and obviously also in the description. All right, let’s start the butter episode. – Hi, my name is Stephanie. I’m from Schaumburg in Lower Franconia in Germany, and the butter dish I want to share with you today is Kochkäse, or cooked cheese in English. It’s a savory spread you would usually eat on sourdough bread. And it’s hearty and it’s rich

And the butter gives it a silky smooth texture, and it’s just a delight. So good, you have to try it. The cheese that makes this dish special is Handkase or Harzer Kase. It’s quite the controversial cheese in Germany because it can be quite pungent and quite smelly.

– This is not what I was expecting at all. It is very pungent, like a real stink of a cheese. (sniffs) Whew! The inside, it looks like some sort of gelatin. Can you eat it raw? I’m not seeing anything that says I can’t, so. It’s got that mature cheese taste. Okay, I’m excited for this. This is gonna be wild. Here we go.

– [Stephanie] We have two types of butter in Germany. The one is Süßrahm or sweet cream, and the other one is mildgesäuerter, which means lightly sour. Or mildgesäuerter, it has a small touch of sourness to it and it has more hearty flavor, and that’s one you want to get for this

Because it blends really well with the cheese. – I think I just need to be like, if I wanna use the small pot, just don’t. I just always need the bigger pot. Like this will be fine, but it is treacherous. “Oh no, stick close to the candles. The staircase can be treacherous.”

If anybody knows where that is from, 50 points. (laughs) – A taste the stuff, the dish because you have an insane amount of it. You have the butter in the Kochkäse itself. For me and for my family, it’s very important that you put butter on your bread

Before you put the Kochkäse on top. Don’t have it without. You have to put butter underneath. So basically, it’s butter and then top with Kochkäse which has more butter in it. So it’s a very buttery dish. This dish is, for me, also very tightly tied to my grandmother and to my mom

Because it was one of the first dishes they taught me how to make because it’s easy and it’s quick to make. – Stephanie said that I can serve this with either bread or schnitzel. So I got schnitzel. – And you can’t really mess it up. It’s a very simple dish,

But I think that’s what stands out about it because you don’t need fancy ingredients or fancy cooking methods to make it shine. It’s an easy starting point in Franconian cuisine, and it’s fabulous anyway. So yeah, just give it a try. Bon appétit. – This looks absolutely delicious,

But I feel like a chicken schnitzel with a equal parts butter and cheese sauce. (lips smacks) Yeah, Germany. (chuckles) Oh my God. (laughs) So good. I wanna live in this butter cheese sauce. I wanna become best friends, go on vacation, talk about all of our secrets, and then like come home and not feel like I overshared with this butter cheese sauce. That’s how close I wanna get to it. (giggles)

The cheese definitely has a very strong flavor, which I love. It’s got that like almost blue cheese strength to it. If you don’t really like a strong cheese, I don’t know if you would feel as deeply as I do about this. But if you do, it’s delicious.

It was not easy for me to find in New York City. I had to go to a specialty German deli and they only had three left. The texture of the cheese was so surprising. I had no idea what I was expecting because I had never heard of it before. It was very mochi-like.

And when I melted it with the spreadable cheese and all the butter, it looked almost like gelatin, which was really interesting. Whoa! Getting melty, but not quite. Stephanie did say that you could make this with Quark, so I’m leaving that in the recipe as well

Because this cheese might be really hard for you to find. But like, ooh! I highly recommend it. I feel like this might be one of the first times that I’ve made a German dish that like, really got me. Like, mmm. But it is butter and cheese, so what’s not to love?

It’s interesting because even though there’s so much butter in this, I really feel like I only taste the cheese, and that’s surprising. I mean, it was truly a one-to-one ratio of butter to cheese. So this is heavy on the burr. Maybe I should have said that in German.

One note, if you look online and find other recipes, ’cause you’re not going to my website, you will see that it says condensed milk. Condensed milk in America is sweetened, and so I almost put in sweetened condensed milk. Condensed milk in Germany is not sweetened.

I just used a half & half type of mixture for it. In essence, you’re looking for milk, you know, in other words. But don’t use sweetened condensed milk if you see another recipe that says condensed milk. You’re not gonna have a good time. Stephanie said put this on bread or schnitzel,

But I would say put this on almost everything else that you like. Off the top of my head, mashed potatoes. That would be incredible. Baked potato, any kind of potato actually. Let’s just start with that. Any kind of potato. Definitely would be so good on rice. I also feel like, hear me out,

Like this would be so good with shrimp on top. Oh! Ugh! I just love it. I’m really into this, and I’m glad that I have a lot because I have a lot of ideas for it. (laughs) – Hi Beryl, hi everyone. I am Claudia and I’m from Italy. The recipe I want to talk to you about is Pizzoccheri. That is a traditional dish from Valtellina. Every traditional dish of Valtellina, it is full of butter because Valtellina was a region where people were shepherds, where farmers.

So all the traditional recipes are with a lot of butter, a lot of cheese, potatoes, and buckwheat. This recipe is a pasta. It is like a tagliatelle, just a bit more wide. – When I got this pasta, I thought that it was broken because of the length of it.

And I was like, “Oh man.” But that is the length of this pasta. I got this off of Amazon, so if you do get it, and I’ll leave a link in the description, it’s not broken if it’s the length of your lip to your nose. – It’s the dish that we always make when we have some guests. It’s the dish that we make when we want to celebrate together something. In fact, it’s not something that you do for one person, two people. It’s really common to do it when you are 10 people

Or even more and you have a celebration. I really like Pizzoccheri. When I was a child I didn’t use to like it so much. – One full stick of butter for the sauce. I was like lizardy. – Because buckwheat, it’s not like normal wheat, it’s a different taste. It’s a different consistence. But then I grow to love it. It’s a special recipe also because it can be made gluten-free. I am gluten intolerant. The original one was gluten-free because people did not have white flour.

– Ha! (blows) I don’t know, ’cause I’ve never had this type of pasta before. Taste it. It’s hot. – [Camera Person] Ooh ha! – Yeah. – ‘Cause it’s buckwheat? – There’s no gluten. – [Camera Person] Yeah. – Okay, it’s done! – [Claudia] It’s really a joy to eat the traditional food with everyone without restrictions for me. The butter can be important because if you use a butter from the mountains that it’s really yellow. This yellow is because the cows have eaten a lot of grass and flowers,

And so the milk will be very yellow. – [Beryl] (sing-song) Butter sauce. Oh, butter sauce. – [Claudia] And butter too and will be very tasty. And so, I hope you will find a butter like that. I really hope you like this dish and you can taste a bit of the mountains.

Have a nice meal, bye. – This pasta just seems absolutely deliciously ridiculous. (chuckles) Oh my God. Okay, the brown butter is wildly delicious. Like, covering your pasta in brown butter is definitely something we should be doing. I was really surprised by the addition of potatoes in this, and I thought potatoes and pasta, that is not a combo that I’m familiar with.

However, it’s a delicious combo. The starch with the buckwheat is really, really good. The buckwheat noodles themselves are a little bit chewier, thicker than a glutenous pasta. This is my first time having them, so I wasn’t really sure when they were ready. Like, it’s a little chewy still.

– [Camera Person] That’s kinda how it’s supposed to. – Yeah. – ‘Cause it’s buckwheat. – There’s no gluten. – [Camera Person] Yeah. – The cheese, it all melted really nicely and it’s got this, just fatty combo with the butter and the cheese and the cabbage, which I love.

The cabbage is so good in this. I’ve just like, is this my new favorite pasta? Possibly. It’s delicious. I’m super pumped that I got to make this the traditional way. I would say, if you don’t have the ability to find buckwheat pasta, I still think you should try making this with the cabbage

And the potato and the brown butter. It’s a delicious combination. Butter and noodles is always a staple, but I’ve never done brown butter in noodles in this fashion. It’s like this is a butter pasta dish that feels decadent, but it also doesn’t feel over the top. Like, my lips feel shiny,

But my tummy feels happy. Ooh! (laughs) That tickled me. – Hi, Beryl. My name is Maritz and I live in Nijkerk in the Netherlands. The dish I would like to talk to you about today is called Boterkoek, or butter cake in English. It’s a pastry made with a lot of butter, and it’s really rich and flaky

And usually has a golden shine on top. It’s really easy to make. And it’s not that fluffy, it’s more like a dense kind of cake. Similar to a cookie, I guess. It’s not something I eat a lot of, but when I make it, it always reminds me of when I was a kid

And when I learned to bake. It’s just taste a lot like butter. As the name suggest, it’s made with a lot of it. I don’t know that many people that actually make it themselves because it’s so available, but if you want to make it the ingredients are really easy to find.

And it connects to the Netherlands because the Netherlands is known for three things, tulips, windmills, and cheese. You can, of course, make other stuff apart from cheese as well. So you can use the same milk to make butter and there’s a lot of it in the Netherlands.

– The amount of baking that I am now doing on this show, as somebody who is a self-proclaimed non-baker who doesn’t even really like sweets, it’s good. I’m getting out of my comfort zone, and I’m getting into the dough zone. – Boterkoek has a lot of good memories for me as well.

It always reminds me of when I was a little kid and I was learning to bake, I would usually stand on this little stool to reach the countertop and would bake cookies with my mom. – Going in overnight. See you tomorrow. Day two of the butter cake. Here we go.

– [Maritz] And when I got a bit older, Boterkoek is one of the first things I learned to bake by myself. I remember making it and taking it to some friends and feeling so proud of this thing I made with my own hands and without any help.

– Okay, I found like a really pretty design online. This is what I’m gonna aim for. You’re all seeing it here first in big. (laughs) – [Maritz] It’s a really easy dish to make, even if you’re not good at baking and you have to have some patience. – Okay. – [Maritz] As I said before, there’s a lot of butter in this dish. – [Beryl] Please, please. Yes! Yes! – It’s almost one-third of the dish, and whenever I make it I always feel I’m just using way too much butter and how can this ever turn out into anything

Except a big tin filled with melted butter. But it always turns out great. – Before I start this, I keep forgetting, the artist behind me is Celeste Laster and she is linked in the description. Her stuff is super cute and she was part of our art club through my Patreon this month.

My Boterkoek, I had to look it up ’cause obviously, like when you look at it, you would wanna pronounce it differently. Hmm? (laughs) This is my personal slice bite. Okay, butter. That is, mmm, and lemon. It’s so interesting. It’s like a cookie-cake hybrid. There’s a crumble to it, but the center is still kind of soft, so it’s not like a bite down, like crumbly cookie. I think that my design actually worked out pretty well. I was intimidated.

I thought I was biting off more than I could chew, but I do think that that worked out quite nicely. It’s all right, it’s okay. This is correct. I don’t love that this had to sit overnight in the refrigerator. I just, I wanted to just finish cooking it. And it was like, what are you doing in there overnight? What are you doing in there that couldn’t have been done in like two hours?

I don’t know. We may never know. Somebody probably knows. I like that you didn’t have to roll it out. I kind of, I mean, in the beginning I was punching it, which was not the move. I have to put my fist into this and then I guess I’ll smooth it.

I would say use a broad spoon to push it down. Like knuckle and dough is not, that’s not the best way to do it. You live, you learn, and then you use a spatula. Classic turn of phrase. I think that if you’re not a dessert person, I still think this would be a crowd pleaser. However, if you are a dessert person, there is something really nice about the sweetness of this and the flavor. It’s very comforting and like,

I mean, it’s buttery and that comfort is butter. And it’s just a really enjoyable experience. – Hi, my name is Emilia. I currently live in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, and I’m from the Philippines and Canada. The dish that I want to show to you today is the Canadian Butter Tart. It’s a simple flaky pie crust in mini tart form with a butter and sugar filling,

Caramelized so that it’s sweet and rich with a nice flaky crust. It’s pretty simple to make. – [Beryl] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, – [Emilia] And that’s part of what I like about it. It’s low risk, high reward,

And it’s small size means that I can enjoy a relatively rich and very sweet dessert. – I’m making a crust. I’m gonna give myself some positive affirmations. You are a baker. You can make this crust. You can do it. You are strong and resilient. (giggles)

– Without feeling too bogged down by it afterwards. It’s history’s attributed to the pioneer movements of the colonial expansion in westward Canada, more common in the anglophone parts of Canada, namely Ontario Westward. However, its first written down papers are in 1900s cookbooks, and its origins traced back to the tarte au sucre,

A Quebec gua, milk and sugar custard. I would say that the butter is the star of the dish because it’s central to both the filling and the pie crust. – It said that I’ll get pea size clumps. I don’t even have pea size clumps. I have like a couple,

Like a couple little lumps. Oh god, so it begins. (laughs) What did I do wrong? It’s been like one second. – A pie crust is almost always made with butter, especially so in this case, to create a rich, flaky, delicate outside and to make a smooth, rich filling as well.

It’s pretty rich, I’m gonna be honest. The filling is incredibly simple, usually just butter and sugar though many original recipes like to add nuts. – [Beryl] Oh my God, it feels so good! – [Emilia] I personally am in favor of nuts, either pecans or walnuts, which are the most common,

But I enjoy it equally with or without. – I dunno what to say. This is me and my dough before I try to bake it. – [Emilia] Personally, my family was not a big Butter Tart family, and it wasn’t until I moved away from Ottawa to the United States before heading back to Vancouver,

That I realized the importance of the Butter Tart as a Canadian staple. When doing research for a cultural fair with some other Canadian friends that I’d made at my school, I tasted Butter Tarts for the first time. And while it wasn’t something I had personally growing up back in Canada,

I immediately found it reminiscent of similar flavors that I’ve had back at home. – My friend’s husband is from Quebec and she brought me this back as a gift. And I was like, “Wow, so much maple syrup.” This is the perfect opportunity for real Canadian maple syrup for a Canadian Butter Tart.

– [Emilia] I think people should try this because it highlights the sentiment behind a lot of Canadian classics. Though Canada is a rich melting pot of a lots of different immigrant groups, the recipes that date back to the original settlers, the English and the French, also have their own merit

As part of our culinary history in this country. – I didn’t fill these evenly. So now I’m just redistributing the wealth amongst the rest. This is a communist style of baking, redistribution. Look, I’m stressed. I’m making bad jokes. (laughs) Ah! (pants) So yeah. (chuckles) – [Emilia] And to be part of that history, all it takes is to make an incredibly simple recipe. – Like, they’re not gonna necessarily win any prizes, but I think they look good. Okay, ta-da! – [Emilia] That is pretty enjoyable

And if it’s not to your taste, someone else will snap it right up. And I hope you enjoy! – I think that these turned out pretty good. The dough looks pretty good. I have a feeling these are going to be incredibly sweet. Why? Because of all the sugar and butter

And maple syrup in them. I think I’m just gonna. Oh my God! Wow! Look, yeah, this is sweet. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, make this. The crust is really good! It’s so buttery and flaky. The inside of this with the brown sugar and the added butter and the maple syrup has this custard-like creaminess, but then it still has the crystally sugariness

Of everything else. I mean, it’s pretty spectacular. It’s also like one and done for me because it is over the top sweet. I mean, actually if I have a cup of tea or coffee, like something a little more bitter to cut this… Okay, actually the more I eat this, I’m like not actually feeling like it’s over the top sweet. I’m feeling just really impressed that I made this,

And because of that I’m liking it a lot. (chuckles) Is it time to say I’m a baker? I mean, I don’t know. Let’s calm down. I’m not a baker yet, but I’m baking. Active verb, baking, (laughs) which is something. The maple syrup is really, really good.

I mean, it gives this kind of deep flavor to it so it doesn’t just feel like sugar and butter. Although it definitely has the butter flavor. Butter is such an amazing ingredient. I have a hot take on butter and I just don’t believe in unsalted butter.

I just don’t think it serves a purpose, and I refuse to buy it. So, because I cook with salted butter, I just don’t add salt to bakes. I’m sure I’m gonna get yelled at for that, but just like you cannot convince me that a bay leaf is a worthwhile seasoning spice.

I’m not gonna start buying unsalted butter. I’m scared you guys are gonna yell at me. (laughs) Maybe, but someone will tell me how wrong I am in the right way and I’ll listen and maybe it’ll change my mind. But nobody’s convinced me of bay leaves yet, so. TBD. (laughs) – I’m Katie Toko Inua, and I live in Aotearoa New Zealand. The butter dish that I want to share with you is ginger shortbread. It’s a very simple shortbread cookie from an old recipe with quite a lot of butter in it. My Canadian grandmother started adding crystallized ginger to the recipe

Because crystallized ginger was my grandfather’s favorite sweet. So the cookie reminds me of Christmas with them. I’ve never known anyone else to make this particular cookie, unless I gave them the recipe. But very buttery shortbread is quite common in Ontario. A lot of Scots settled here and we produce a lot of butter.

We produced 475,000 metric tons in 2023. – [Bery] Ooh, that is yellow! Wow! – [Katie] Because of our climate, our cows are kept on pasture for most of the year, so our butter is mostly grass fed and it’s very yellow. – Katie mentioned how yellow New Zealand butter is like.

This is the butter that I normally buy at the American grocery store. Look at that. Look at that. – [Katie] I really like the flavor. I think that New Zealand butter has more of a flavor than butter in some parts of the world. It’s not cultured,

But it has got a lovely flavor to it from the cream that we use. I’ve adapted the recipe for ginger shortbread a little bit. My grandmother’s recipe called for a pound of butter, but here, the butter comes in 500 gram blocks. – I kind of feel like I want more, like. I’m gonna…

I’m just adding like a little more ginger. I really like ginger, a lot. Oh, it’s so soft! It’s ’cause it’s mostly just butter. – So, when I make it, I make it with nearly 50 grams more butter than she did. – “Cut two pieces of paper.” Got it.

Okay, “spoon half of the dough onto each.” Okay, two pieces of paper, half the dough, and form logs. – [Katie] I think that shortbread is perfect for a butter recipe because even though ginger is in there, both the texture and the flavor of the cookie just rely on the butter.

– Here is my log, (chuckles) going in. Ugh, okay, ugh. I didn’t, okay, wait. Okay. (chuckles) – [Katie] I mean, there’s more butter by weight than any other ingredient in this recipe. It’s pretty easy to make, even for a beginner baker. As long as you trust the process

And you don’t add extra flour. When you find out that the dough is really soft, you just need to let that butter harden back up again in the fridge. The only other thing that I’ve sometimes had trouble with is making the slices too thin, and then they can burn in the oven.

– I just realized this is the second time I have ever made cookies. (chuckles) So let’s see. Okay. – [Katie] I think everyone should try ginger shortbread because it’s such a simple recipe with really decadent and sophisticated results. – For my second time making cookies, I feel like these look pretty good. Obviously, there was a huge hole in my log. There’s a hole in my cookie. I guess it’s dough, so I can like fix it. But, stupid log. And I think that’s ’cause I was just so scared

Of overworking the dough that I didn’t really compress it enough. So that was a good lesson. Okay, I actually really like this ’cause of all the ginger in it. I didn’t mean to fiend such a surprise. I just think like in general, a shortbread cookie is not necessarily a show stopping type of cookie. I’m not even really a cookie connoisseur.

I don’t know where all my judgment is coming from on my cookie genres, but just like the ginger in this adds so much nice flavor. This is so buttery, and it’s got this soft texture, but then you get the chewy biteyness of the crystallized ginger,

And it makes the whole thing feel like pretty exciting. Also, I just love crystallized ginger. What Katie said about butter in New Zealand I thought was super interesting. I made sure to get New Zealand butter, and she’s right. Like, I hadn’t really paid attention to the color of butter,

But that yellow was luscious, vibrant, and like daffodil color yellow. Definitely made me feel like that’s quality butter. And I also appreciated that I used salted butter in this recipe. Just to say, looks like baking with salted butter’s not so crazy after all. All in, I think this was a fabulous episode. I got a sense of butter in a way bigger way than just croissants or just pastry. I love that we had savory and we had sweet. That German dish, I still think about it. It was so freaking good. (laughs)

Don’t forget that all the recipes are in the description. And I’m leaving you with two other episodes, my baking episode, which had a couple of fails in it but we’re learning, and my memory meals episode, where I did make cookies for my first time. And I will see you all next week.