This 3-Ingredient Sauce Upgrades Every Green Vegetable It Touches

It also tastes amazing on sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and more.

Simply Recipes / Mihaela Kozaric Sebrek

My mom always made sure that something green was on the table, whether that meant sautéed spinach dusted with Parmesan from the green container, baby sweet peas from the silver le Sueur can (which seemed SO fancy to me as a kid), or string beans from my grandparents’ garden.

I’ve lived on my own for more than 15 years at this point, and while the veggies I serve are a little different from what Mom used to put on her table, I still don’t think dinner is complete without a green vegetable. Talk about the power of habit!

Most nights I keep the prep work very simple: Roasted asparagus, lightly sautéed kale, and steamed broccoli are regulars on my table. However, vegetables cooked so simply are just begging for a little something extra to dress them up and add flavor. That’s where miso butter comes in.

A Flavor Match Made in Heaven

The combination of miso and butter is so wonderful that, in my mind, it’s right up there with the most iconic duos: peanut butter and jelly, cinnamon and sugar, and caramel and sea salt. The savory, salty miso is a perfect pairing for creamy, rich butter. However, to make my miso butter even more irresistible, I add a third, secret ingredient: toasted sesame oil.

This blend of flavors works incredibly well with green vegetables because it adds a few important elements—fat, salt, and umami—that veggies cry out for. The miso butter makes your taste buds perk up right away, but the flavors are subtle enough that they don’t overwhelm the natural taste of the greens. They simply enhance them.

Simply Recipes / Megan Scott

How To Make Your Own Miso Butter

To make my miso butter, mash together one stick (eight tablespoons or four ounces) of softened salted or unsalted butter, two tablespoons of white miso (also called shiro miso), and two teaspoons of toasted sesame oil. You can use a fork to do the mashing, but if you have one, a handheld mixer works particularly well.

Once the ingredients are combined, transfer the butter to a small airtight container and keep it at room temperature if you plan to use it all within a week. Or store the butter in the fridge, where it will keep for up to one month. Room-temperature miso butter melts readily once you add it to your veggies, but if you prefer to keep it in the fridge, just cut it into small bits before adding it to the vegetables, or melt it and drizzle it over them instead.

Simply Recipes / Megan Scott

How I Like To Use Miso Butter

I use miso butter the most with steamed broccoli. I add a tablespoon or two of the soft butter to a large bowl, and once the broccoli is tender I tip it into the bowl and toss everything together until the butter melts and lightly coats the broccoli. That being said, miso butter has limitless potential. Use it to flavor everything from zucchini and asparagus to Brussels sprouts and bok choy.

For vegetables that you plan to sauté, you can use miso butter as the cooking fat instead of oil. The miso will brown a little on the bottom of the pan, but those brown bits are pure flavor, so make sure to add a tiny bit of liquid (water or stock are both perfectly fine) to the pan towards the end of cooking and scrape up the bits with a spatula.

While green veggies are perfect with this butter, I also serve it with baked whole sweet potatoes, steamed cauliflower, roasted winter squash, and grilled or boiled corn on the cob. In fact, there are few vegetables I wouldn’t serve this with. It’s that good.

Read the original article on Simply Recipes.