Yeah, I thought the same thing, why the hell do I need to freeze butter?
I have seen this a few time in recipes, and I always wonder why.. More so than the known fact that it makes a flakier crust or pastry.
First off, there are two ways to incorporate the butter. One way is by grating the frozen butter with a cheese grater, and the other way is by using a food processor to cut the butter in.
The cheese grater method is as simple as it sounds, freeze your butter, get out a cheese grater and grate like you are grating cheese. The food processor, is probably easier, but you freeze the butter into little chunks, about tablespoon size and then add the flour into the food processor and then the chunks of butter and pulse it until it looks like coarse meal.
The best thing about frozen butter, is that you can substitute frozen butter for “butter softened” in a recipe, by grating it first, of course.
From what I have researched on the internet, grating butter mimics an “old-school pastry technique” called Fraisage. And none other but Julia Childs brought this old-school french trick to the americans, de-bunking all of the pie crust basics. You know the basics I’m talking about “don’t over work the dough, don’t let the butter melt, you can’t use cold water, it has to be ICED water”, you know, those types of things. These are things I have seen in recipes forever, with big bold shouting CAPS putting emphasis on this crap.
Well the Fraisage uses a food processor to pulse the dough together with the butter, and add ice water little by little until the dough forms. Then you work it out on a floured surface with the heels of hour hands, sort of like kneading bread. Really I would call it smearing dough onto the floured surface.
So from what I gathered, by using the cheese grater to grate the butter, you cut out that smearing step, and you still get the result of the fragments of butter distributed throughout the dough. And you still get the effects of the dough puffing when it gets into the oven.
I have also seen the grating of butter method for a pastry called “rough puff” which you might know as flaky pastry. And this is not to be confused with puff pastry. I think a biscuit is more like a puff pastry, you break the butter up in to pieces before mixing it into the flour.
In my search for the truth about frozen butter, I found out that you can add grated butter into your eggs. Their ratio said 1 tablespoon for 3 eggs scrambled, and you grated the butter right into the eggs and scrambled. I have not tried this yet, but I will soon. I also read that you can use this method to make a bunch of eggs, and put them in a oven on low until serving them, and the eggs won’t dry out, another little thing to try.
I also ready you can use the grated butter on toast and all kinds of bread, and it melts immediately and doesn’t ruin you bread while you are trying to butter it after you take it out of the oven.
They said using the grated butter, give less of a chance on sauces and gravies separating on your. and if you forget to leave butter out to soften when you want to make cookies, use the frozen butter grated and wait 15 minutes.
So, from now on, the herbal butters that are in my freezer can move over, I’m going to put most of my butter in the freezer to use it grated from now on.
The picture is from the “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, by Julia Child.
Also, I read about the frozen butter here and here.