How to brown butter and use it in sweet and savory dishes

We’re accustomed to the conventional wisdom in cooking that color equals flavor, and brown butter is no exception.

While good butter — especially something cultured and high-fat — can be great as is, taking a few extra minutes to brown it can turn it into something truly sublime, ideal for cooking and baking.

“If brown butter weren’t classic in savory cuisine and traditional in some pastries, it would be easy to think of it as a trick to make us pay attention to an everyday ingredient,” cookbook author Dorie Greenspan says in “Baking Chez Moi.” “It’s a fine line between brown butter and burned butter, but stay on the right side of that line and you get the aroma of nuts and the flavor of caramel.”

Sign up for our 8-week Baking Basics newsletter to become a better baker

In France, brown butter is known as “beurre noisette.” “Noisette” is the French word for hazelnuts, which brown butter resembles in color and even flavor. Here’s what else you need to know about this staple that is ideal for both sweet and savory dishes.

What is brown butter?

Butter is a matrix of fat, water, proteins and sugars. To coax another layer of flavor out of it, you must first drive off the water. After that, as the mixture continues to heat up, the proteins and sugars start to interact with each other to form new flavors and aromas. This is the browning reaction known as Maillard. Once the little flakes of milk solids you can see in the melted fat have darkened, you officially have brown butter.

The Maillard reaction: What it is and why it matters

How to make brown butter

Making brown butter is as simple as, well, browning the butter. Here’s a concise method adapted from Joy Wilson’s recipe for The Best Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies in our archives.

Advertisement

Melt 1 stick of unsalted butter in a medium skillet over medium heat, swirling it in the pan occasionally. It’ll foam and froth as it cooks, and start to crackle and pop. Once the crackling stops, keep a close eye on the melted butter, continuing to swirl the pan often. The butter will start to smell nutty, and brown bits will form in the bottom. Once the bits are amber brown (2 1/2 to 3 minutes or so after the sizzling stops), remove the butter from the heat and pour it into a small bowl, bits and all. This will stop the butter from cooking and burning.

If your recipe calls for more than one stick of butter, you can move to a larger skillet. Just make sure its interior is light and not dark so that you can better monitor the color of the milk solids as they brown.

Stella Parks likes working with a stainless steel saucier, which she says has the right mix of light color and heft to ensure the milk solids don’t scorch. Regardless of what you use, pay attention and be ready to adjust on the fly. “Most brown butter mishaps are related to scorching, which is generally a sign the butter is cooking too fast over heat that’s too strong, and/or is in a pot that’s too large,” she says. “If that describes your experience, try reducing the heat and using a heavier pot. Conversely, if your gripe with brown butter is that it always takes much longer than the time listed in a recipe, make sure you’ve got the right pot for the job and feel free to bump up the heat.”

Other tips for success

Browning butter is not hard but requires some vigilance. Use your eyes, ears and nose. The bubbling and crackling (“it will sound like an audience of people politely clapping their hands,” Joanne Chang and Christie Matheson write in “Flour”) followed by silence means the water has been cooked off and it’s time to pay even closer attention as the solids brown. In other words, don’t walk away!

Advertisement

When transferring brown butter to a bowl, be sure to use a flexible spatula to scrape out every last bit, as the solids that adhere to the pan are where all the flavor lives. Cook’s Illustrated offers another way to ensure nothing is lost: stirring and scraping constantly once the sputtering stops and browning begins.

Also, don’t bother trying to brown salted butter, Cook’s Illustrated advises. In its testing, the magazine found that salted butter had no flavor advantage over unsalted. It also foams more, making it harder to monitor the color and keep the milk solids from burning.

If you’re using butter that has been frozen, let it thaw completely to avoid burning, Rose Levy Beranbaum says in “The Baking Bible.”

How to use brown butter

Using brown butter as a sauce is a great way to dip your toe into making it and appreciating its flavors. Spoon it over meat, vegetables or seafood, spiking with your choice of herbs or citrus juice. For a few examples, check out Whole Roasted Cauliflower With Almond Brown Butter, Scallops With Grapefruit-Brown Butter, Pecan-Crusted Trout With Brown Butter Herb Sauce and Brown Butter Green Beans.

Baking really lets brown butter shine, as its toasty, nutty flavors pair especially well with caramel, warming spices, vanilla and, of course, nuts. Feel free to start simple, such as using brown butter to amp up your favorite marshmallow and rice cereal treats. Brown butter is easily swapped in for any recipe that calls for melted butter or oil. It adds dimension and gooey texture to these Brown Butter Blondies. For recipes that call for creaming or beating butter, you can combine the browned butter with more softened butter, as in Wilson’s cookies above, or let it cool in an ice bath until it’s the same consistency as softened butter so you can then use a mixer to aerate it. That’s the approach you’ll find in Carrot Cake With Brown Butter-Cream Cheese Frosting.

For a textbook example of the marriage of nuts and brown butter, look no further than Brown Butter Pecan Pie. The brown butter forms the basis for the filling, to which you add brown sugar, corn syrup, eggs and an impressive two cups of toasted pecans.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLOwu8NoaWlqYmR%2Bc3uQcmahp6diwbB5waumsKZdl8K1wMSrZg%3D%3D