It's a bountiful life: Better with (flavored) butter
September/October 2023 California Bountiful magazine
French-trained chef’s creation makes gourmet cooking a breeze
Interview by Linda DuBois
Photos by Richard Green
After graduating first in her class at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, chef Janet Melac went on to own two award-winning fine-dining restaurants in California. Eventually though, with a husband and two children, she grew tired of working long hours and nights. So, in January 2012, she went to work for longtime friend Jane Hayes as the research and development chef and quality assurance manager for Hayes’ company, Monterey Farms in Salinas, which produces ready-to-eat artichoke hearts.
A few years later, Hayes told Melac she wanted to add a product line of compound butters, or butter flavored with fresh herbs and spices. Because these are common in France, the French-trained Melac was up for the task. She got to work, and they launched Chef Butter in the summer of 2022.
How did you settle on the final few flavors?
It was very difficult. When I started, I probably made 30 to 40 flavor profiles. We sent butters all over the country to all of our friends, probably hundreds of people. We gave them surveys about what they thought of it and their favorite flavors. From that research, we ended up with the six original flavors (basil garlic, cabernet porcini, French herb, serrano lime, roasted shallot and shiitake ginger) and we’re launching three more: lemon dill and two sweet ones—orange cardamom and blueberry lemon. Those are great for pancakes or muffins—and the orange cardamom is great for a hot toddy. Just sayin’ (laughing). We’ll probably eventually have a full line of sweet butters, adding a few more, little by little.
Why would somebody want to use compound butter?
It makes cooking so incredibly easy because the seasoning is already done. It’s a lot of work to measure and chop up all the herbs and spices in a recipe. Our compound butters are made from 100% fresh ingredients. So, they’re highly flavored. All you would have to do is get your raw ingredients and cook them in our butter. I use it every night. I can’t stand it when I don’t have it in my fridge. It does need to be refrigerated. We put a “freeze by” date on it of three months and it keeps frozen for as long as you need to keep it, and there’s no need to thaw it before using it.
Where do you find your ingredients?
We source a lot of the fresh herbs from Bay Area Herbs out of South San Francisco and then a lot of local things from the farms around here. We use a lot from the purveyors in Monterey County that I’ve been using since I had my restaurant 30 years ago. We get our garlic from Christopher Ranch. It just depends on the time of year and what we’re making. And I go to farmers markets three times a week. It’s my favorite thing to do. I find it very inspiring to go and see what’s there. So, I have a lot of relationships. These butters have so many ingredients because there are so many flavors.
Describe your process in making the butters.
We have about 20 employees and our team makes everything in-house. We roast the shallots and grill the serrano peppers and peel and seed them. We puree almost everything in a (food chopper) into a compote. Sometimes, like for the cabernet porcini, the shallots, the porcini mushrooms and the black pepper have to be reduced with red wine and red wine vinegar until it makes almost like a paste, and we make a compote from that. Then we add the compote to the butter, once again with a mixer. We then form them by hand into rolls while it’s still soft. After they’re chilled and a little more solid, we put them in their cute little triangular boxes.
Is there a favorite flavor?
Well, the first one I ever made was shiitake ginger, and it is the most umami, very flavorful. They’re all flavorful, but it’s unique. We grill the shiitake, we reduce them with soy tamari and ginger and then we mix that with butter. Oh my gosh! It’s delicious! People really, really like it. We started the lemon dill because people were asking for it. That’s an easy one for people to use. It goes on everything. It’s fun because you can be as creative as you want with these. You can do anything with them and mix and match the proteins with the different butters.
Who do you market and sell them to?
We do a lot of food service and restaurants with our artichokes, and so we’ve introduced the butters to them. We figure it’s a good way to sell them in bulk. Restaurants that do larger parties, banquet style things, are especially interested in them because it cuts down on work. You know, labor is money. In January, we started offering them direct to consumers on our website, montereyfarms.net, and they’re on Amazon. We are also in local stores in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. Hopefully, we’re going to get into some chains really soon.
What do you find most rewarding about your current job?
We have an amazing team. The people who work for Jane are so dedicated to her. It’s hard to start something new. Everything about the butter production is different than what our team has ever done before. It’s just been great to have this team excited about something they’ve never seen before. This is my 11th year and many of these people have been there as long as I have, and some of them longer. And, of course, creating new flavors of butter is just the best fun!
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