Butter Me Up
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| It's like industrial cheddar |
This is an amusing exercise, because it involves, as Tom once phrased it, an unorthodox use of one's Kitchen-Aid. Julia Child prefers the blender, but Tom argues for the heavy-duty capabilities of the foodie's favorite mixer. Since crab butter is essentially crab shells pulverized into butter, you want as much power behind the pulverization as possible. Though he does recommend putting a dish towel over the bowl and mixer, which prevents crab bits from flying about but makes your mixer look like a fertility goddess eating ortolans.
The basic preparation is simple if time-consuming. I softened 2 sticks of butter for our big Dungeness carcass. Pulverize the two items in the Kitchen-Aid (with aforementioned towel) for about twenty minutes. I treated it like microwave popcorn: when it had been a while between successive cracks as the paddle attachment broke through another bit of crab shell, I figured it was ready to go. Put the shell/butter mix in a good sturdy pan and put it in the oven for roughly an hour at low heat (250 or so).
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| Halfway through the pulverizing |
Cover with a lot of water, bring to a simmer, strain. Now you have a mix of water and butter. Refrigerate so all the butter rises to the top. The butter is by this time very orange, and smells not subtly of crab; I couldn't even look at it without suddenly having crab smell all over me.
Separate the butter, melt it, and cool it again. Then put in the freezer for some future use. And what do you use it for? Julia suggests using it as a sandwich spread, or for finishing shellfish sauces. At any rate, it takes up a lot less space than the carcass did; I chopped it into four equal bits so I can just pull out what I need.
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