How to Butter Boston Fish Chowder

Video Transcript

"Okay now be careful when you open this up because this is very spicy. That air can actually make you choke a little bit so be careful. All right, I am just going to get rid of some of that. So what I've got is some softened butter and I am going to take probably about a tablespoon of Chipolte puree and I am going to put that in and I don't know, I am feeling a little spicy so let's put a little more in. Okay and then we are going to mix it up so that it is nice and spreadable for our croutons and you can see the butter is really soft and that will just mix up. I always use once again, unsalted butter because I like to be able to adjust the seasoning the way I like to. We are just going to mix together until it is nice and smooth. It smells wonderful, smoky and spicy. Once that is almost spreadable, we will season it. Grab a little salt to season it a little bit. That is probably a quarter teaspoon right there. Not a lot. And that was about a third of a stick of butter and 1 1/2 tablespoon of Chipolte and I just going to add some. I don't like to leave that on there but I like to make sure that it is completely covered so I will take off some of the excess butter so that there is not too much butter but I want to make sure that it is spread evenly across and that will give it a nice beautiful crispy spicy butter feel. Now you could do this with olive oil but I never tried it and classically they don't use butter croûtons. They use those Crown Pilot Crackers as I said and they actually melt a pat of butter in the center of the Chowder which I will show you later on. For me that is a little bit too much and I found that gilding the lily a little bit. A little bit too rich for my taste. So I kind of like combining the butter in a lesser quantity with a little bit of spice. So now we are going to into a 350 degree oven until they are crispy and I've got to say that is probably about 15 minutes but some of it depends on how fresh your bread is. I tend for my croûtons not to use fresh bread because I like my fresh bread plain when it starts so this is kind of a day old bread. It is another good use for day old bread. So if your bread is quite fresh, it is going to have more moisture and it is going to take a little bit longer in the oven but what you really want is for them to be nice and crisp like a cracker. So in the oven we go and we are just going to let them go. "