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Imagine making butter taste better without adding anything to it. Imagine butter cooked slowly over low heat, its milk solids caramelizing, giving it a nutty sweetness. You get all this from brown butter.

Browning butter is a rather simple kitchen task, but it produces stunning results. So grab a few sticks of butter and a small saucepan and let’s upgrade our beloved butter to fragrant, nutty brown butter ready to be used in a batch of fast and fancy sugar cookies, the sauce for pasta, or an elegant dip and spread for your roasted vegetables.

(Image credit: Lauren Volo)

How to Make Brown Butter

Brown butter is simple enough to make — you melt butter slowly over low heat until it foams and the milky whiteness turns brown and sinks to the bottom of the pan. Two things are happening in the process. First, the water in the butter is cooking out, concentrating the butter’s flavor. Second, the butter’s milk solids caramelize, flavoring the butter with their nutty richness and extending the life of the butter.

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Brown Butter

To Strain or Not to Strain?

Some brown butter recipes call for straining the flecks of browned milk solids out of the butter before storing. I prefer to leave them in the butter, as I think they make the stored butter more flavorful. If your browned butter got slightly burned, straining can save the butter. Strained brown butter is ideal if you plan to use the browned butter for sautéing.

What to Make With Brown Butter

Brown butter can be used anywhere you’d use butter, including spreading on toast, topping pancakes, making pie crust, roasting vegetables, baking cookies, adding to hot buttered rums, adding to more butter, making into a sauce for vegetables, eating with a spoon, baking quick breads, making cinnamon rolls, topping biscuits, sautéing vegetables, searing steaks, and scrambling eggs, just to name a few.

Comments

Makes about 6 ounces

Nutritional Info

Ingredients

2 sticks
(8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into uniform pieces

Equipment

Medium frying pan or skillet, preferably light-colored
Heat-proof bowl

Instructions

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Melt the butter: Melt the butter in a medium light-colored frying pan or skillet over medium heat. Swirl the pan occasionally to be sure the butter is cooking evenly.
Watch carefully: As the butter melts, it will begin to foam. The color will progress from lemony-yellow to golden-tan to, finally, a toasty-brown.
Remove to a heatproof bowl: Once you smell that nutty aroma, and the butter is the color of graham cracker crumbs, take the pan off the heat and transfer the browned butter into a heatproof bowl.
Storing the brown butter: Once cool to the touch, transfer to a glass jar and store at room temperature for 5 days or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.