How to Make Brown Butter With Ease

By Zoe Denenberg

Whenever I want to add depth to a dish, there’s one solution I think of first: Add brown butter. Brown butter has all the richness of regular butter, but its deep, nutty, slightly sweet flavor improves just about everything it touches. Once you learn how to make brown butter, you’ll have the ultimate single-ingredient sauce and possess the power to add dimension to any dish, both sweet or savory. Drizzle it over fish or pasta, roast veggies in it, or add it to chocolate chip cookies or muffins.

Before we dive into a step-by-step guide on how to make brown butter, let’s start with the basics:

Butter is made up of three components: Butterfat, milk solids, and some percentage of water depending on the variety. Brown butter (also called “beurre noisette,” which translates to “hazelnut butter” in French) is made by heating butter until A.) the water evaporates and B.) the milk solids caramelize. After around 10 minutes, the melted butter will be bespeckled with toasty brown flecks, a sign that the Maillard reaction—a process that gives browned foods, like seared meat or toasted marshmallows, their complex flavor—has occurred. Those caramelized milk solids give browned butter a deeper, richer flavor than a pale block of the stuff.

When making brown butter, our most important piece of advice is to monitor the pan closely throughout the browning process (around 10 minutes of total time). To tell when it’s ready, rely less on the clock and more on your senses: You’re looking for the milk solids to darken to a golden-brown hue and a nutty aroma to perfume your kitchen. But be warned—brown butter goes from brown to burnt in a blink of an eye. Look away for just a moment and you might end up with a smoky, ashen mess. Follow these step-by-step instructions and you’ll be a brown butter virtuoso in no time.

Start by choosing a light-colored, heavy-duty saucepan, which makes it easier to monitor the toasting flecks as they begin to brown; stainless steel works well here, but you can also use a light-colored nonstick or ceramic pan.

As for the butter, you can use salted or unsalted butter—just keep in mind that salted butter brands vary greatly in salinity, which will impact the overall flavor of your dish. Starting with room-temperature butter will speed up the process, but we don’t always have the foresight to soften butter ahead of time, and that’s just fine. If you’re using butter straight from the fridge, cube the cold stick of butter (to help it melt evenly) and place it in a saucepan. Set the pan on the stovetop over medium-low heat.

Before the milk solids can brown, the butter’s water content must evaporate. The ratio of butterfat to water is the distinguishing factor between American and European butter—American-style butter has a higher water content than its European counterparts. Note that butters with a higher ratio of fat (i.e. less water) will brown more quickly. Depending on the water percentage and the amount of butter you’re browning, the evaporation stage can take 3–5 minutes. Once the butter melts, it will start to sizzle, a sign that water is leaving the building. Resist the urge to crank your stove to medium heat or higher: For evenly toasted brown butter, slow and steady wins the race.

Once the water is gone, the milk solids will separate from the butterfat; you can tell this is happening because the butter will foam up. Now is the time to dial in your focus. Stir occasionally with a metal whisk or silicone spatula to prevent the milk solids from sticking to the bottom of the pan where they may burn. At this point, the butter should start to smell sweet and aromatic.

As you continue to cook the butter over medium-low heat, the milk solids will begin to brown. Keep a careful eye on the color and stir constantly, scraping any brown bits off the bottom of the pan, until the butter is very aromatic and the milk solids are a rich, golden brown, about 3–5 minutes. If the foam is obscuring the color of the butter, remove the pan from the heat, tilt it to one side, and use a spoon to check the color of the milk solids. Remember that the butter solids will continue to darken after the pan is removed from the heat (it can go from rich and nutty to acrid, black, and inedible in a matter of seconds), so if it’s your first time browning butter, err on the side of a light amber hue. You can also toss in an extra tablespoon of cold butter, or splash in a little liquid like lemon juice or water to stop the browning.

When the butter solids are amber-brown (or a shade darker, if you’re daring), pour the butter into a heat-proof bowl. You can pass it through a strainer if you want to separate the solids from the liquids—a process some recipes require so that the liquid butterfat and toasted solids can be added at separate stages—or skip the straining, season the brown butter, and spoon it over whatever you please.

Now that you’ve mastered the art of brown butter, go forth and use it on everything. Pour it over French toast or pancakes, use it to enrich a batch of oatmeal or cornbread, or drizzle over it soup. Add garlic and lemon juice to transform it into a deeply savory brown butter sauce, ideal for basting butternut squash steaks, glossing pasta, gnocchi, or ravioli, or adding extra depth to creamy mashed potatoes. (Pro tip: Make a big batch of brown butter ahead of time, freeze it, and use it in all your Thanksgiving recipes.) Or in the summer, blend it into a vibrant tomato brown butter, which pairs well with whatever’s coming off the grill.

Brown butter also adds extra nutty flavor to this toffee-brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe, and can do the same in blondies or pecan pie. You can harvest just the brown butter solids to make smooth, silky brown butter frosting, the ideal pairing for rich chocolate sheet cake or cupcakes. And while you’re at it, supercharge all your brown butter with milk powder for an even richer, toastier flavor. Want to make vegan brown butter? Yes, you can.

You can use brown butter in pretty much any recipe that calls for melted butter, but since the water has evaporated, the volume and moisture content will be altered. While this small variance likely won’t make much difference in savory cooking, it can have a big impact on precise baking. But you can even things out with one little tweak: According to Epicurious food editor Jesse Szewczyk, you can expect to lose roughly one tablespoon of water per stick of butter that’s been browned. To account for this water loss, add 1 Tbsp. water per stick back to the browned butter, whisking to incorporate. From there, use brown butter as a 1:1 substitution for melted butter. Try it in this no-mixer melted butter coffee cake.