Recipe Obsession: Honey-Chipotle Butter

I love sweet corn in the summer, especially grilled. Just buy at the farmer's market, throw on the grill, turn occasionally until the husk is completely blackened, peel as quickly as possible (I burn my fingers more doing this than cooking anything else), douse with butter and salt, and consume. It can be tough, but remember to breathe between bites.

For years, I thought this was the ideal for sweet corn, but I was wrong. I found a recipe from our sister publication Sunset a couple weeks ago that achieves grilled-corn nirvana: Honey-Chipotle Grilled Corn. You grill the corn as usual, then brush with a magical elixir of chipotle peppers, honey, and butter blended smooth. Then you grill the husked corn for just a few minutes to get a slight char on the kernels. It's spicy, it's sweet, it's smoky, it's perfect.

Okay, the recipe isn't exactly light (only 232 calories per ear, but 13 grams of fat—yikes!), but man, is it good. I've been using the leftover honey-chipotle butter everywhere I can. It's fantastic on baked sweet potatoes, rice, or even grilled peaches. Yesterday I made a sandwich with some leftover pork tenderloin sliced thin and honey-chipotle butter: awesome. It's all I can do to keep myself from eating this stuff straight with a spoon. The only thing I've yet tried that isn't good with honey-chipotle butter is grilled zucchini; the flavor gets diluted by the liquid in the squash.

And while I'm hyping Sunset, go check out their One-Block Diet blog. They're attempting to grow all the food for an end-of-summer feast on their own office campus, from fruits and veggies to raising chickens and bees, to making their own wine and pressing their own olive oil. Granted, it's in the gardener's paradise that is northern California, but an interesting project nonetheless.

So, anybody have any other ideas for this honey-chipotle butter? Maybe put it in my next batch of bread?