As I mentioned in my recipe for Maple Brown Butter Mashed Sweet Potatoes, using brown butter is like taking a magic wand to your recipe and adding that special je ne sais quoi that takes it from good to spectacular. And the best part is that it doesn’t require any fancy tools or special ingredients. Just the regular butter you have in your fridge plus a few minutes in a skillet and you have a deliciously deep, nutty butter that you won’t be able to get enough of.
I wanted to do a separate tutorial on how to make brown butter so that you can get all the details and see just how easy it is. Plus, I’ve got a few suggestions on how to use your brown butter to get your creative wheels spinning. Seriously, you can add it to just about anything. Since I’m just getting started on my brown butter journey, here are a few excellent examples of how to use brown butter from other bloggers:
- Add it to cookies (Vanilla Brown Butter Pecan Cookies, Caramel Stuffed Brown Sugar Cookies)
- Use it as an easy sauce for pasta (Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter Sauce)
- Drizzle over vegetables (Brown Butter Garlic Honey Roasted Carrots, 15 Minute Balsamic Brown Butter Roasted Asparagus)
- Use it in pasta sauces (Brown Butter Pumpkin Fettuccine Alfredo)
- Drizzle over seafood or meat (Brown Butter Honey Garlic Scallops)
- Use in other baked goods (Brown Butter Apple Pie Scones)
Now read back over that list but skip the “brown butter” in the description. Not nearly as amazing sounding, right? I’m telling you, brown butter makes a recipe.
The process is incredibly simple, so let’s go!
How to Make Brown Butter – Step by Step Photos
Start by adding several pats of butter to a light-colored skillet. Avoid dark surfaces, like cast iron or teflon because it’s hard to see the butter change color. Try to cut the butter into equal sized pieces so they melt at an equal rate. Heat the butter over medium-low heat. You can use salted or unsalted butter, depending on your need. Just be aware that salted butter will taste slightly more salty once finished. And it’s never a bad idea to brown a little extra, ‘cuz you can totally store it in the fridge and use it on other things.
As the butter begins to heat and sizzle it will become foamy. Stir the butter often as it cooks.
You’ll notice the butter solids (proteins) begin to settle to the bottom of the skillet and after a couple minutes the solids will just begin to get a hint of color. Once you see this slightly golden color, it’s time to pay close attention because they’ll begin to brown quickly. Cooking the butter at a lower temperature slows the browning process down, so I suggest brown butter newbies to go low and slow. If you’re an old pro you can do this over medium heat or maybe even slightly higher and have your brown butter in the blink of an eye.
Because the color develops quickly, you’ll want to stir very often to prevent hot spots from browning the butter unevenly. The foam will also begin to subside as it cooks.
There are different levels of brown butter. Some people like it light, some like it almost black (The French actually have a name for that–beurre noir). Once it gets to this medium brown color you’ll begin to smell the wonderful nuttiness. It smells like a mix between caramel and toasted nuts. YUM! But I want to go a bit further…
This deep golden color is where I like to stop. Deep, nutty, and rich. The amount of time it takes your butter to get to this point depends entirely on the heat level, but on medium-low it took me about 4-5 minutes. It’s relatively quick either way. Once browned you’ll want to transfer it to another container immediately to prevent the residual heat from the skillet browning it any further.
Now your brown butter is ready to use in all of your favorite baked goods or for drizzling over your favorite foods. Brown butter should not be used for frying or any high-heat cooking as the milk solids will cook further and burn quickly.
What is your favorite way to use brown butter? Let us know in the comments below so we can all hop on the brown butter train!
I love it on stovetop popcorn!
Brown butter is a gift from god. I love making desserts with brown butter. The flavor is so good. My favorite is brown butter blondies.
My favorite thing is using brown butter with pumpkin or butternut squash ravioli! So tasty and rich!
Oh, but those little browned bits are so tasty! It does make sense to drain them off in contexts where the butter is going to be used for further cooking, though. But if used for finishing a dish, I leave them in.
My first introduction to browned butter was in a simple pork chop dish from Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course videos (this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7FUg1sH6lw He’s so likeable and nice in these!). Just sear the pork chops, with a few crushed garlic cloves and sprigs of thyme in the pan (before I had a thyme plant I used ground thyme to similar effect), then when you flip them to cook the other side, add a couple tablespoons of butter, which you use to baste the chops as they cook the rest of the way. By the time you’re done, the butter has browned. The recipe doesn’t explicitly have browned butter in the name, but later when reading another recipe using browned butter, I realized that’s exactly what it was and part of why the chops are so delicious. It’s so fast and easy and delicious, and is now my go-to weeknight pork chops recipe.
The very best way to use up left-over mashed potatoes. After refrigeration, they are stiff enough to form into patties–fry in brown butter, making sure that the temp isn’t so high it burns the butter. Lifts leftovers to a heavenly level!!!
We love brown butter in as many things as possible. Our favorite is pasta or ravioli.
Something fun – but a treat – you could use it on popcorn!
So when you pour off the melted, what do you do with what’s leftover?
There really shouldn’t be much left over. Most of it will be liquid. If you’re using the butter just to drizzle over something after cooking, you can keep the solids in there. Otherwise, if you’re separating it the solids will be waste product (it’s a very small amount).
Delicious!
If you have an Indian/Asian store near you, also look up ‘Ghee’ as another type of butter that’s great to use. It’s basically clarified butter, so with most of the water already removed.
So far, I’ve only used it in rice krispie treats–you double the amount of butter the recipe calls for, brown it, then I throw in a bunch of frozen chopped pecans to very briefly toast in the hot butter. Then add the marshmallows and cereal as usual, making sure you get all those solids mixed into the butter. The best part is, since the rest of my family doesn’t like nuts, I get them all to myself. :D
That sounds amazing!!
Thanks for the tips! I love learning new kitchen skills =)
I like to pour it over cooked ravioli and give it a toss. So very good, especially on butternut ravs
Brown butter ravioli sounds delicious! I’d love to try that.
I like to use it in a bowl of vegetable soup. Also, there is a technique where you brown the amount of butter, say, in your Toll House cookie recipe. Then you pour it into a measuring cup and added back the missing water. Chill it to solid again and then use in the cookie dough. Delicious browned/caramel flavor. The water stays separate but it mixes normally once you get going.
Interesting technique!
On spaetzle! So good.
I’ve used it to replace the regular melted butter in both rice krispy treats and graham cracker crusts for key lime pie with great success. This recipe is great too and I make it often: http://www.thegunnysack.com/brown-butter-snickerdoodle-blondies/