Name: How to Make Browned Butter
Prep time: 1 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 13 min
Yield: 13
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1 pound (16 oz or 4 sticks) unsalted butter; 4 heaping teaspoons dry milk powder (optional)

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Today we’re all about how to brown butter. Browned butter is one of the joys of the kitchen that brings so much flavor to baking and cooking.

Learn how to brown butter, and anything you use it in will just taste better.

And then use some browned butter to make brown butter blueberry buckle or maybe some silky cream of cauliflower soup.

A glass jar with brown butter in it on a blue plate.

Watch my making the best brown butter web story here.

What You'll Find in This Post Click to view ToC

What’s the Big Deal About Browned Butter?

Some of you may be asking why you’d want to brown butter in the first place.

The answer is to heighten the flavor of the butter, making it both nutty and a bit butterscotchy.

The French call this nutty goodness beurre noisette, which means hazelnut butter.

This of course has to do with the nutty aroma, but I would also say that the color of the browned milk solids are about the color of hazelnut skins as well: a deep, almost mahogany color.

But not black. Black equals burned.

What Is Brown Butter?

Browned butter is really a misnomer, because we’re not browning the butter itself so much as we are browning the milk solids in the butter and then infusing that caramelized flavor into the remaining butterfat.

That’s a bit of a hair-splitting distinction, but now you know so you can be That Smart One who knows a bunch of awesome stuff about cooking.

Pro Tip

To amp up the flavor of your brown butter, add a heaping teaspoon of dry milk powder per stick of butter. More browned milk solids = more flavor!

How to Brown Butter

Since beurre noisette has a deeper flavor than “regular” or whole butter, it of course will deepen the flavor of everything you put it in.

It works especially well with recipes calling for brown sugar—chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, blondies, etc–because it reinforces the toffee-ish/butterscotch flavor profile that you get when you mix butter and brown sugar.

On the savory side of things, browned butter works really well with fall flavors: butternut squash and pumpkin come immediately to mind.

There is a reason that pumpkin ravioli in browned butter and sage is such a beloved dish.

Add a bit of beurre noisette to sauces and gravies whenever you want to heighten caramelized flavor.

Brown butter also has a higher smoke point than whole butter since we no longer have to worry about the milk solids burning because they’re gone.

Try pan frying fish in browned butter, tilting the pan and spooning the hot fat over the fish as it cooks.

Take a look at this post on how to make beggar’s linguine. There is no recipe, but you just use up bits of this and that and bind all the ingredients together with brown butter to make a delicious and easy pasta sauce.

How to Substitute Brown Butter for Whole Butter

Keep in mind that, because your butter after cooking is 100% fat and whole butter is only about 80% fat, if you want to substitute browned butter for whole butter in baking without any change in the texture of the finished dish, you’ll have to decrease the amount by 20% and increase the liquid by the same amount.

If a recipe calls for 4 oz (1 stick) of butter, substitute 3.2 oz browned butter (4 oz times 80%) and add an extra .8 oz liquid (4.0-3.2=0.8).

Process

collage of 6 images showing how to make brown butter — The process is easier to see in the video, but these step by step photos showing how to brown butter give you an idea of the color the milk solids should be. You can stop even a little shy of where I did. You don’t want to take them any darker than deep mahogany.

work over medium heat, swirling the pan often
once the milk solids sink, it will not take long for them to brown, so keep an eye on it
once the solids have turned a medium brown, immediately strain the butter into a waiting bowl

This brown butter post is the result of a reader request.

If you have any requests or questions on any baking or cooking techniques, please don’t hesitate to ask.

You can leave a comment on this post and I will usually respond within 24 hours. If your question is more urgent, email me, and I’ll get back to you within about 4 hours (unless I’m sleeping).

Happy to help, so just shoot me an email!

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How to Make Browned Butter

Yield: 13 oz

Prep Time: 1 minute

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Total Time: 13 minutes

When you know how to brown butter, you have the ability to bring incredible toffee-like, nutty notes to everything you bake and cook with it.

Making browned butter is not difficult. It requires a watchful eye, a heavy bottomed saucepan, and medium heat. Don't try to brown it too quickly, and don't walk away, and you will be rewarded with deliciousness, I promise.

Ingredients

1 pound (16 oz or 4 sticks) unsalted butter
4 heaping teaspoons dry milk powder (optional)

Instructions

Place the sticks of butter in a medium sauce pan and melt over medium heat.
Cut the butter into pieces to help it melt more evenly.
Once the butter has melted, keep it over the heat.
Add the milk powder now, if using.
Swirl the pan occasionally as the butter cooks.
You will notice it start to sputter and boil after a couple of minutes. This is the water in the butter boiling away. Some foam will collect on top of the butter, too.
Keep swirling the pan and cooking the butter until you can see deep golden brown bits (milk solids from the butter) on the bottom of the pan. The butter will smell rich and nutty and kind of like toffee.
Carefully pour the butter through a fine mesh strainer and into a heat proof bowl. You can leave the browned bits in the butter or carefully spoon the browned butter into another container, leaving the browned milk solids behind.
Cool to room temperature and then store in the freezer for 2 weeks. For longer storage, browned butter freezes very well and will stay fresh for several months.

Notes

The best pan to use to make browned butter in is one that is white inside, like a small enameled cast iron pan. If you don't have one, use a stainless steel pan. Don't use a pan with a dark interior, because you won't be able to judge the color of the milk solids.

You can brown a lot of butter at a time without issue. Just make sure your pan is large enough. to hold the butter and be careful not to burn yourself.

Note that even though you start with a pound of butter, you will end up with about 13 oz of butter. This is because the water in whole butter, which accounts for roughly 80% of the weight of butter, will boil off during the browning process.

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