Last week, I stopped by Citizen Kitchens, the commissary/co-working kitchen/culinary incubator that’s housed in what’s known in the neighborhood as “the Love Building” near the intersection of Charlotte Avenue and 47th Avenue North. The kitchen space was buzzing with chefs and food entrepreneurs preparing their products. I stopped in to visit with Wendy French Barrett, proprietor of Wise Butter, a line of handmade, small-batch compound (flavored) butters.
Barrett started out making butter from scratch after deciding to make it a fun weekend project. It really struck her fancy and she decided this would be the way to turn her passion for food into a business. However, the many regulations the state of Tennessee has on dairy products forced her to get creative and (let’s hope, temporarily) set aside her dreams of making butter from scratch and instead make flavored butters. She instead uses good quality Amish butter (sourced regionally), Plugra (European-style, higher-fat butter), and when available, Hatcher Dairy butter. After years of working on recipes and testing on friends, Barrett launched Wise Butter officially in March of this year.
Flavors of butter include Roasted Garlic Basil (one of her first flavors and her best seller), Chipotle, Apricot Almond, Vegan (made with coconut oil and soy milk) and a roster of seasonal flavors such as Salted Caramel Peach and Maple Cranberry. Though she personally prefers the savory butters — which she says work great as seasonings drizzled on meats as well as side dishes — she said demand has been high for the sweet butters, which are great to spread on breads or put in oatmeal or on cakes. I sampled several of the flavors, and all were fantastic.
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