“Caesar Butter” Is My New Favorite Way to Make Chicken Taste Ridiculously Good
Eight years ago, I still remember the day I was working next to The Kitchn’s now Executive Editor Lauren, when she made Cowboy Butter for the first time. (Yes, THE viral Cowboy Butter that has since inspired endless copycats on TikTok!) We tasted the spice-laced melted butter, dripping off a slice of ribeye and knew she had struck gold — this stuff was special. Cowboy Butter has remained in my rotation ever since as an easy way to jazz up a piece of meat, veggies, or just a baguette TBH.
It’s been about a year since I’ve made Cowboy Butter, though — not because I grew sick of it or forgot the recipe. It’s because a different butter kinda stole my heart, and it makes everything it touches taste incredible: Caesar Butter. If you love Caesar salad dressing enough to find excuses to use more of it (guilty — I love dunking pizza crust in it), then Caesar Butter is its more fun cousin. Packed with the familiar flavors of briny anchovy, bright lemon, salty Parm, and spicy Dijon, this melted butter sauce turns everything it touches into a truly memorable meal.
Get the recipe: Caesar Butter
This summer, I’ve used Caesar Butter as a dipping sauce for basically everything that comes off the grill: NY strip steak, chicken wings, zucchini, sweet potatoes. The flavor has so much dimension you keep going back for more, but it’s the texture that’s truly special: thick and velvety, not the result of what you’d get from simply melting a stick of butter and whisking in a bunch of flavoring agents. You first bring lemon juice to a boil and then whisk in the butter, piece by piece, until the sauce is a creamy yellow. This step is important: Get the butter too hot, and you risk it separating into a melty mess. Once you stir in the ingredients and give it a taste for seasoning, it’s ready.
The ways in which I use Caesar Butter continue to pile up beyond steak and chicken: a secret sauce for burgers, tossed with pasta, as a dip for crunchy cucumbers, drizzled over roasted green beans. It’s become my secret weapon, a party trick I can rely on to impress any friends who come by for dinner. Even my 3-year-old has skeptically gone in for a taste, looked at me big-eyed with surprise, and declared, “That’s really good, mama!” So you know it is.
Get the recipe: Caesar Butter
This article originally published on The Kitchn. See it there: “Caesar Butter” Is My New Favorite Way to Make Chicken Taste Ridiculously Good