Spicy Tomato Butter

Matt is in charge of meat in our house which means, unless it's in a soup, stew or stir-fry, he's in charge of the seasoning and cooking. He just seems to have the touch, whipping up amazing spice rubs on the fly and cooking things to perfection without a thermometer. Last night he had two beautiful New York Strip Steaks from the farmers market to play with.

He started with a basic rub of chipotle, salt and smoked paprika which would have been good enough on its own, but then he decided to go the extra step and make a compound butter to melt over the finished steaks. Oh, was that butter good, smoky, spicy (but not too hot), garlicy, just darn good. It is quite bold, but these grass fed steaks stood up to it easily.

The butter was also tasty on the roasted potatoes and Matt was dreaming about just smearing it on some good bread.

Spicy Tomato Compound Butter

1/2 t smoked paprika
pinch chipotle powder
pinch of kosher salt
3 sundried tomatoes, the dry kind not the kind in oil
1 clove garlic
2 T unsalted butter

Purée all the ingredients until the tomatoes and garlic are well chopped and everything is blended.

Makes about 3 Tablespoons (you can freeze any butter you don't use for another time)

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