With its cheeky name and delicious taste, Lard Ass butter has gained a legion of fans since the first pat was churned in 2018. Back then, butter maker Monica Cavarsan was using a churn no bigger than a small washing machine. Half a decade later she has just commissioned a churn that can handle 2,000 litres of cream to make her award-winning European-style cultured butter at her Ocean Grove factory on the Bellarine Peninsula.
Lard Ass butter starts with cream sourced from farms in western Victoria. Cream that comes from herds of grass-fed cows. Cream that is full-flavoured and sweet. Cavarsan warms the cream and adds a little culture to it to develop flavour. The cultured cream is churned, and the resulting butter is drained and washed. It’s then salted, or left unsalted, or flavoured with natural ingredients such as smoked garlic or smoked tomato.
Lard Ass butter is formed by hand into two-kilo wheels that are favourites of chefs and bakers, as well as 500-gram sheets of butter with 82 per cent fat content, perfect for laminated pastries.
The Lard Ass range includes ghee, too. This is made with unsalted cultured butter that is clarified to remove the lactose and almost all of the protein, leaving just the golden-coloured butterfat. This is perfect in Subcontinental cooking and other instances where you want the richness of dairy, a distinctive flavour and a high smoke point.
Cavarsan also cultures cream to make crème fraîche, the secret ingredient in many a chef’s bag of tricks. And for dairy lovers who love the pure, fresh taste of cream, Lard Ass cream is a favourite.
You can order Lard Ass products online, buy them at farmers’ markets or visit the website for stockists.
Products: Cultured butter, flavoured cultured butter, ghee, cream and crème fraîche.
lardass.com.au, @lardassbutter