Steamed Artichokes with Garlic Butter

An artichoke is mostly a delivery system for whatever you dip it in, and nobody has improved on melted butter with garlic in it. The eating is slow and hands-on — pull a leaf, scrape the meaty base against your bottom teeth, discard the rest — which makes this a good thing to put in front of people who are standing around your kitchen waiting for dinner. The heart at the bottom is the payoff.

Ingredients

Artichokes

• 2 large globe artichokes
• 1 lemon, halved
• Salt

Garlic Butter

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
• 3–4 cloves garlic, minced or grated
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice, or more to taste ¹
• Salt

Directions

1. Cut off the top inch of each artichoke with a serrated knife, so the tight inner leaves are opened up.
2. Snip the thorny tip off each of the outer leaves with kitchen shears. This is optional but makes them much friendlier to handle at the table.
3. Trim the stem flush with the base so the artichoke can sit upright, or peel the stem and leave two inches on — it is the same tissue as the heart and tastes the same. ²
4. (Optional) Rub every cut surface with a lemon half as you go, and drop the trimmed artichokes into a bowl of cold water with the squeezed lemon halves in it. ³
5. Set a steamer basket in a large nonreactive pot over an inch or two of salted water. ⁴
6. Stand the artichokes in the basket stem-end up, cover, and bring to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer.
7. Steam for 25 to 45 minutes depending on size. They are done when an outer leaf pulls away with no resistance and a paring knife slides into the base of the stem easily.
8. While they steam, melt the butter over low heat with the garlic. Keep it gentle — you want the garlic softened and fragrant, not browned, which takes about 5 minutes.
9. Off the heat, stir in the lemon juice and salt to taste. Pour into two small bowls.
10. Drain the artichokes upside down for a minute so the water trapped between the leaves runs out, then serve warm with the butter.

Eating One

1. Pull off a leaf, dip the pale base in butter, and draw it through your teeth to scrape off the flesh. Discard the leaf.
2. Work your way in. The leaves get more tender and more edible as you go.
3. When you reach the thin, papery inner cone, pull the whole cone out at once.
4. Underneath is the choke — a dense tuft of fine fibers. Scrape it out with a spoon and throw it away. It is not edible and it does not soften with cooking.
5. What remains is the heart. Trim off any stem end that is still tough, cut it into pieces, and finish the butter with it.

Notes

• Buy artichokes that feel heavy and squeak when you squeeze them. Leaves that have spread wide open or gone brown and dry at the edges mean it has been sitting a while.
• Steaming beats boiling here only because a boiled artichoke holds a surprising amount of water in it. If you have no steamer basket, boil them and just drain them well.
• Leftover garlic butter is worth keeping. It sets up solid in the fridge and is good on bread or tossed with pasta.
• Cold leftover artichoke is fine eaten as-is, and the hearts are good chopped into Bruschetta.

Footnotes