So this past weekend I encountered a peculiar line in a recipe which I am hoping someone with more cooking knowledge than me can shed light on
Combine flour, brown sugar, and a pinch of salt in another bowl. Using two knives, work cold butter, cut into pieces, into flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle mixture evenly over blueberries.
What I ended up doing whats putting everything into a pyrex bowl and pathetically hacking at the butter chunks until my wrists hurt. My question is two-fold:
1) Why? I assume the recipe has some justification for why two knives are the appropriate tool.
2) Is there a particular technique one should use when "working" the mixture?
Best Answer
You need to incorporate the butter into the flour such that the butter is in hazelnut sized lumps, without melting the butter. If you chop it that small on a board it will soften as you handle it. So you have to do it in the bowl.
You could buy a pastry cutter/dough blender but to be honest they are a pain in the wrist. If you have a food processor, you have a perfect pastry making tool - just blitz the butter and flour with a couple of pulses, then dribble in some cold water, blitz again, and repeat until you have a coherent (but not too sticky) dough with the aforementioned hazelnut sized lumps of butter mixed through.