Kayla, tell us what Butter from the Block is:
Butter from the block is a small batch producer of compound butter. Compound butter is simply butter mixed with ingredients that add sweet or savory flavor, like honey, herbs, or garlic. Our butters are intended to elevate your dishes whether you’re cooking at home or in a professional kitchen. We’re currently partnered with Real Good Kitchen, a licensed, shared commercial kitchen. This is where we test and develop recipes and produce the batches for orders, markets, and pop-up events. Our goal is to partner with local producers for the ingredients we use.
Kelley, how did you two meet? Give us a little background on each of you.
I (Kelly) am a Knoxville native and have lived here my entire life. I received my undergraduate and graduate degrees from UT and am currently a data scientist for a healthcare analytics company.
Kayla moved to Knoxville from Latrobe, PA in 2010, received her undergraduate degree form UT and is currently HR Manager at a heavy civil construction company. We met through mutual friends while attending the University of Tennessee and have stayed friends ever since.
What was the spark that you both had to create this business?
We both have always been interested in supporting local makers of the community and throughout the years of our friendship, we’ve always talked about partnering and doing something fun. We’re both foodies, and this product was something we noticed wasn’t very big in this area. We started doing some research on it and coincidentally around the same time we started brainstorming, the Real Good Kitchen had an open house. We stopped in and spoke with the kitchen manager, and we kind of never looked back.
Describe some of your butter blends.
We offer a variety of butters, savory and sweet. For the savory butter, we have: Roasted Garlic and Herb which is a roasted garlic blended with parsley, dill, chives, and basil. Black Truffle Garlic also has roasted garlic and black truffle sea salt. Sweet Heat is a blend of calabrian chili peppers, habanero powder, and honey to round out and balance the heat from the spicy peppers. These butters can be used in anything from grilled chicken or steak, steamed or roasted vegetables, or mashed or roasted potatoes.
For the sweet butters, we have: Cinnamon brown sugar, Lavender Honey, and Bourbon Maple. These are great for any kind of breakfast items such as pastries, pancakes, waffles, scones, biscuits and also sweet potatoes or acorn squash. Some of our customers like to bake with our butters as well.
We also feature monthly seasonal flavors with savory and sweet options.
Where can people find your butter?
Our Instagram page is our main portal for online orders. We’re going to be attending more markets and will advertise those on our Instagram page as well. We can be found by searching Instagram #ButterFromTheBlock.
Join Amy Campbell-Rochelson weekly at The Tennessee Farm Table Podcast & Broadcast for stories of Food, Farming, and Folklore. Listen on your schedule by podcast at TennesseeFarmTable.com or listen in on your radio Saturday mornings at 9:00, 89.9. WDVX, Knoxville, 2:00 WUTC, Chattanooga and Sundays at 1:00 from Radio Bristol.
