Southwestern-Style Cowboy Butter Recipe

It's hard to deny a seared steak (or plate of shrimp, or baked potato, or bowl of broccoli) topped with a nice pat of butter — especially when it's packed full of Southwestern flavor like this cowboy butter. As the butter melts, it adds layers of depth to every bite. Is it a bit decadent? Absolutely. But, once you take your first bite, you'll understand.

TikTok's cowboy butter phenomenon has been raging for a while, and it shows no signs of stopping. There are a handful of recipes out there for cowboy butter, but none like this. In this recipe, we embrace both the original cowboy butter and the heritage of cowboys to give the butter a unique, Southwestern flair.

Chipotle powder imbues the butter with a smoky edge and a bit of heat, chives and garlic add an allium punch, a dollop of Dijon mustard gives a nod to the butter's origins, and lime zest and juice add brightness and zing. All of those flavors together make a compound butter perfect for serving with any meat, seafood, vegetable, or starch to which you wish to add a burst of Southwestern flavor.

For this recipe, you will need softened butter, chives, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, Dijon mustard, cumin, chipotle powder, black pepper, and lime zest. Once you have those ingredients together, you're ready to start mixing up your cowboy butter.

Add all of the ingredients to a bowl.

Mash together with a spoon until well mixed.

Spoon the butter mixture onto a piece of plastic wrap.

Roll the butter into a log and ensure it is fully covered by the plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator for 1 hour to solidify.

To serve, slice the chilled butter into rounds.

Perhaps the best thing about cowboy butter is its versatility. There are few foods out there that are not improved by delicious compound butter. It's a quick and easy way to add a ton of flavor to foods that otherwise might be a bit drab.

Chilled cowboy butter is perfect for serving with hot foods. You can slice a nice pat off the log and set it in the center of a perfectly cooked steak, for example. As the butter melts, it sauces the steak with rich flavor. This method is also perfect for seafood, vegetables, and starches: You can drop some butter into a split lobster tail, melt it over corn on the cob, or use it to finish a baked potato.

You can also serve the cowboy butter at room temperature, when it can be easily spread. Sliced bread or rolls accompanied by this flavor-packed butter are a great way to start a meal.

Finally, you can also use cowboy butter as a dipping sauce for meat and seafood. Dipping sliced steak into melted cowboy butter is all the rage on the internet, and it isn't hard to understand why. But, if you're more traditional than that (and dipping steak in butter seems a bit decadent), warm ramekins of melted cowboy butter are much more exciting than traditional drawn butter for dipping steamed crab legs.

It would be easy to assume that chipotle peppers are just another variety of chile, like a jalapeño, habanero, or serrano, but chipotles are not what you think they are. Chipotle peppers are actually just dried and smoked jalapeños. Chipotle powder, of course, is just ground-up chipotles and offers a smoky spice with a bit of heat.

Given the smoky nature of chipotle powder, your best bet to replace it is smoked paprika. Smoked paprika has the flavor of both the sweet peppers it is made with and the smoke it is prepared with. Because smoked paprika is typically made with sweet peppers, it doesn't have the same level of heat as chipotle powder, which may be a bonus for some folks.

Next up, we have ancho chile powder. Similar to how chipotles are dried and smoked jalapeños, anchos are again not a unique type of chile but simply a dried poblano. Ancho chiles are not smoked, but they do have a mild smokiness about them, which makes ancho powder a good substitute.

Finally, if the above options don't work for you, you can just substitute any kind of chile powder. Don't use "chili powder," because this typically includes other spices, such as onion powder and garlic powder. Opt for a pure ground chile, which is available in the Hispanic foods aisle of most grocery stores.