Paula Deen's coming to Sacramento on Friday, and all of a sudden it's smelling a lot like butter.
The Food Network star and queen of Southern cooking has never been shy about loading her recipes with butter – heck, she even has a recipe for "fried butter balls" that calls for two sticks of butter.
Deen also sells her own butter- flavored lip balm, you know, just like grammy used to make.
But Deen's hardly the only cook with a bent for butter. Go to most high-end restaurants and you'll find small yellow mountains of butter on hand, for adding rich mouth-feels to foods, sautéing vegetables, helping to make pastry crusts perfectly flaky, and so much more.
And what would that morning toast be without a tasty dollop of butter?
"Butter is the real deal," said Deen in a phone interview. "Seasonings have always been a big part of Southern cooking, but for so many years I bought margarine. It was cheaper, and I didn't have a lot of money. Now, if I could do it again, I'd spend the money on butter."
Beyond Deen's recipes for "gooey butter cake" and "chocolate gooey butter cookies," any chef with classical culinary training has spent heaps of time working with butter. Without it, French cooking would be starved of many of its staples. There'd be no roux, the combination of fat (usually butter) and wheat flour that's the thickening agent and backbone behind many of France's classical sauces.
Over at Bistro Michel, the downtown Sacramento French restaurant, the chefs go through "case upon case" of butter.
"Outside of salt, it's the second-most-important ingredient in the kitchen," said chef Scott McNamara of Bistro Michel. "It's pretty much in anything we do. For French cooking, it's the richness and the mouth feel. It's an ingredient that can be changed into so many forms. You can't do that with many other ingredients."
Butter is made by churning cream until its fat globules merge, essentially turning a liquid into a solid. It's a fairly simple process but can take on variations including the addition of salt or active cultures to produce richer flavors.
At Sierra Nevada Cheese Co. in small Glenn County city of Willows, they create an organic, European-style butter that's exceptionally creamy. It contains 82 percent milk fat, compared with the typical 80 percent fat content of butter. Along with its range of cheeses, these butters, which sell for $4.99 for an 8-ounce package, are among its more popular items.
"When we do a run of butter, we go through about 6,000 gallons of cream a week," said Kathy Gallego, quality assurance manager for the cheesemaker. "That's a pretty substantial amount."
While cooking may be better with butter, most health experts agree butter is best used in moderation. Those with high cholesterol levels have to be mindful that one tablespoon of butter contains more than 7 grams of saturated fatty acids – a fairly high amount for those who need to watch their saturated fat intake.
Terese Hollander, who runs cooking classes through A Healthy Kitchen, offers a couple of butter- related strategies to her students.
"What I like to do is use half butter and half olive oil to be heart-healthier," said Hollander, who also serves as educational manager for the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op. "You're getting health benefits of the olive oil but also the flavor of the butter. If you're making something like a rich risotto dish, use the butter sparingly and add it at the end.
"For people who are dieting, sometimes a small amount of butter is what'll satiate people," added Hollander. "One teaspoon of butter on a slice of whole- grain bread is a perfectly viable option. Everything in moderation is good."
Raphael Kendall, a chef at downtown's Capitol Garage, prefers to cook with a vegan butter called Earth Balance. It's a spread that's based on a blend of oils – canola, palm fruit, olive, soy bean – and is free of trans fatty acids. These "Vegan Buttery Sticks" and other Earth Balance products go into plenty of cooking from Kendall, who is vegan himself but also cooks non- vegan items at Capitol Garage. You'll find it mixed in Kendall's cakes, frostings and risotto.
While Kendall knows the taste of traditional butter, he prefers Earth Balance for its overall flavor and ease with cooking.
"It feels cleaner and smoother to me," Kendall said. "Even just spreading, it just melts right on there. You can also sauté with it because it won't burn as easily (as butter), and it's a lot healthier, too."
A newer option is coconut butter, which is made from whole coconut flesh and turned into a spread. A 16-ounce jar sells for about $14.
"It's kind of an 'it' product on the market," Hollander said. "If you like the taste of coconut, it has that faint flavor, but it's also rich."
Margarine? Most serious cooks consider it a no-no. Since margarine is oil-based, making a classic French sauce with it would basically be a kitchen disaster.
"Margarine has a synthetic taste and is greasy, while butter is creamy," McNamara said. "If you put a pat of butter on some blanched peas, the butter will coat like a sauce. With margarine, the peas will be shiny with a greasy texture that's not as appealing."
Or you can go on the complete opposite end and dig into clarified butter. This is just about as decadent as butter gets, which has all of its milk fat removed. You're left with pure butterfat that lends itself exceptionally well to high-heat cooking.
Regular butter burns easily, but clarified butter – or, as it's known in south Asian cuisine, ghee – stands up to sautéing and other applications since there are no milk solids to be burned.
Meanwhile, McNamara offers Bistro Michel diners the option of a rich Pamplie butter from France. A 2-ounce serving with a baguette costs $5, and many customers can't get enough.
"It's rich and very dense, almost cheeselike," McNamara said. "Some people come in specifically for the butter and want it to-go."
And, although Deen has been delivering the moderation message more since announcing she has type 2 diabetes in January, this sounds like something she would do.
"It's always been an important ingredient," Deen said. "Butter is a pure product."
PAULA DEEN LIVE!
What: The Food Network star cooks, shares stories and fields questions from the crowd.
When: 7 p.m. Friday.
Where: Community Center Theater, 1301 L St., Sacramento.
Cost: $44.75; $100 for VIP tickets that include a meet-and-greet with Deen.
Contact: (916) 808-5181, www.Tickets.com.
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