After Elaine’s delicious parsley quinoa hash from last week, we still had a bunch of our homegrown parsley in the fridge. I decided to ...
Parsley fever….not always so pretty

After Elaine’s delicious parsley quinoa hash from last week, we still had a bunch of our homegrown parsley in the fridge. I decided to make a lemon-parsley butter to have with mashed potatoes. Sierra Nevada Cheese Company, based out of Willows, CA, generously sent us some of their organic European butter. It’s vat-cultured and has a super creamy texture and an amazing richness. Try it side by side next to store-bought butter and you’ll think they are two entirely different products. Better yet, make your own.

To make my butter, I whirled a couple large handfuls of parsley with the zest of 1 lemon, juice of half a lemon, about 1/2 cup butter, and some salt in the bowl of a food processor. It’s best to start with room temperature butter so that it blends well, which, I of course neglected to do (grrrr).

(Notice the yellow markings on all the equipment? We have four kitchens and each is color coded—I was working in the yellow kitchen.)

Now, the moment of truth. To mash the butter in or not to mash it in? The test kitchen consensus was to mash it in.

Hmmmm….. not exactly what I was going for, but tasty. They’d be perfect for St. Patrick’s Day or even Christmas with the red skins of the potatoes.

Let’s try this again with our very own potatoes that we’ve been storing (they’re buttery Yukon Golds)…..

(Can you believe they’ve been stored for 7 months?)

Now that’s more like it!

This time, I just made traditional mashed potatoes with with butter and milk and then I melted my parsley-lemon butter and drizzled it on top. No more holiday-specific potatoes!

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