One of the very special ‘perks’ we get often get in our CSA share at Red Wagon is a choice of herbs.

I thought it might be helpful to start a section here sharing a couple of my favorite things I do with herbs: Herbaceous Salad Dressing and Compound Butters (below).

This is one of my favorite salad dressing, it’s a Herbaceous dressing using parsley or cilantro. This dressing uses hard boiled eggs, not raw eggs like most dressing. So, the worry of eating raw eggs is avoided AND the dressing will keep in the refrigerator for several day, unlike raw egg dressings.

Herbaceous Salad Dressing

• 2 hard boiled eggs
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp dry or Dijon style mustard
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 cup oil, any kind or mix of any kind you like or have on hand
• 1/4 cup of any oil or mix of any oil
• a big handful of parsley or cilantro chopped

Start with your eggs and herbs. I have bantam chickens and their eggs are about 1/2 the size of standard size hen so I needed more bantam eggs to = 2 large eggs.

Put the egg yolks in a bowl with the dry ingredients and smash them up with a fork.

Next stir in the oil and vinegar, it makes a creamy, but not too thick dressing.

Mix in the chopped egg whites and herbs and refrigerate the dressing for a few hours to let the flavors mix and mellow. This keeps for a week or so and is great on all greens and mixed vegetable salads.

The next idea for using the herbs we get is making compound butters.

Compound Butters are a versatile fun addition to simple meals. They are so easy to make, you can use almost any combination of herbs and they keep in the refrigerator for a couple weeks and freeze pretty much indefinitely. If you freeze the butter you can cut off small portions as you need them.

The method for all compound butters is the same, just change the herbs you add.

Directions for all compound butters

1. Add all ingredients to a large glass or steel mixing bowl. Using an electric hand mixer, beat all ingredients until well incorporated and fluffy. If you do not have an electric hand mixer, you can do this by hand using a wooden spoon.
2. Place a piece of plastic wrap onto your counter and spoon the butter mixture out of the bowl and onto the center of the plastic wrap.
3. Grabbing the bottom portion of the plastic wrap, pull it up over the butter and begin forming the wrap around the butter, rolling and forming a log shape. Twist the ends of the plastic wrap and place butter in the refrigerator or freezer.

I had a bunch of dill and a few bulbs of green garlic from last week so I thought I would make a compound butter. This will be great to have on hand this summer when we grill fish or vegetables.

Here is the butter, dill and green garlic on the plastic wrap. I decided to add some lemon zest at the last minute.

Now roll the mix into a log and don’t forget to label it!

Yum…popcorn! I just remembered compound butters are great for popcorn too.

Have a great week and add any questions or comments to the bottom of the post.

Mo