Escargot Butter (“Escargot” butter with garlic and fine herbs)

When I was four years old, my parents took me to Paris. Somehow, they were confident that their preschooler would be patient enough to endure a visit to Notre Dame, museum visits, and all the French delicacies the city had to offer. I loved every minute of it.

It was on this trip that my parents introduced me to escargots, the most classic French snails cooked in garlic and herb butter. I have a clear memory of the snails, nestled in their shells, arriving at the table. My parents gave me a strange contraption – a pair of tongs with rounded ends to hold the shells – and a small two-pronged fork to remove the snails. Lured by the fragrant garlic butter, I dug in, intrepid. This is how my love affair with snails began.

To this day, I still order escargot whenever I see them on a menu. While the snails themselves are delicious – soft, meaty and flavorful – it’s the herb and garlic sauce that I look forward to the most. At restaurants, I keep the dish long after I’ve finished the escargots themselves (frustrating for the servers who keep trying to clear the table, I’m sure), so I can take the time to sop up every ounce of butter.

I love the sauce so much that I decided to recreate it at home. There are many versions of escargot butter: some require mixing the butter and aromatics with a blender, others mixing by hand, and still others using a food processor. Some cooks avoid shallots, while others incorporate them. I finally landed on a simple version that’s easily prepared in a food processor: a butter made from garlic with the subtle sweetness of shallots and a bright green color from fresh flat-leaf parsley.

I always keep a jar of butter in my fridge and it’s become my go-to sauce for a variety of vegetables and starches, including blanched green beans, roasted mushrooms, and crispy potatoes. It’s also delicious with a dollop of hot roast chicken or pan-fried fish, or mixed with plain pasta and drizzled with a coarse grating of Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s my lazy way to make dinner better: it instantly gives dishes an irresistibly sweet and savory garlic flavor.

Five ingredients and five minutes are enough to prepare compound butter. While I like to use a food processor, which makes it easier to chop the garlic, shallots, and parsley and ensures the butter is consistent and well blended, you can easily make it by hand. Just be sure to finely chop the alliums and herbs so you don’t end up with large chunks of garlic when you use the butter.

If you’re making the garlic butter by hand, it might be tempting to use a grater, like a Microplane, but, as former Serious Eats editor Sho noted in his article on how to tame garlic’s pungent flavor, this can result in a puree “so intense it could possibly be used as a weapon.” I recommend sticking to a knife, unless you want your breath to smell like garlic forever. As for the butter, it should be at room temperature, which will ensure that your compound butter is as consistent as possible. Start with cold butter and you’ll have a hard time incorporating the alliums and herbs, even if you use a food processor.

I may not be in Paris, but cooking with this garlic butter makes me feel like I’m sitting in a French bistro. And who could say no to that?