How To Brown Butter

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Let’s learn how to brown butter! Brown butter is a type of cooked butter full of toffee and caramel notes. Use brown butter in both sweet and savory recipes or as a dipping sauce or condiment.

Brown butter can take a dish or a food to a whole new level with its rich and intense flavor. While it can seem complicated and tricky, browning butter is actually quite simple and is a skill any cook or baker should master in order to take recipes to a whole new level.

Let me teach you how to brown butter easily so you can start leveling up your dishes today.

It is so versatile and can be used just about anywhere regular butter is used with some proper modifications and adjustments, which we will get to.

LIGHT-COLORED SKILLET or PAN– although this isn’t essential for the success of brown butter, it is very helpful in order to see when the butter has been properly browned (especially if this is your first time making brown butter).

A SMALL HEATPROOF BOWL– brown butter can go from perfect to burned in a matter of seconds. Having a bowl to pour the butter into stops the cooking process and insures it doesn’t burn.

SILICONE OR RUBBER SPATULA OR WOODEN SPOON– you will need to stir the butter the entire time you’re working with it.

Browning butter is a quick process, so prepare to stay with your butter for about 5-10 minutes without walking away.

Once the butter has melted, it will start to sizzle and white foam will appear on the surface. Continue stirring. If the butter is sizzling too aggressively, turn the heat down a bit.

After about 5 minutes, the foam will start to disappear and you will notice white milk solids collecting at the bottom of the pan. These are what will cook and turn the butter brown.

As the milk solids cook, they will go from light brown to brown to amber colored very quickly, at which point, the mixture will start to smell intensely like caramel and toffee.

This is why I like to pull the pan off the heat when I think the butter is close, as the pan will retain enough residual heat to keep it cooking without being an intensely hot source of heat under the borderline brown butter.

Burned milk solids are very dark brown and almost black, which is why it’s important to stop at that perfect dark amber color. Burned butter is very bitter and unappetizing.

Butter as we know it is made up of churned milk or cream, composed of water, liquid milk fat, and milk solids (also known as curd). When we melt butter, we evaporate some of the water and separate the rest of the mixture into milk fat and milk solids.

Ghee, also known as clarified butter, is the liquid milk fat portion only, which means it has slightly less lactose than traditional butter.

Brown butter is called such because the milk proteins left behind from separating the butter during melting are what get cooked and toasted to that beautiful brown color. The toasted milk solids are actually where most of the flavor comes from, so don’t leave out the brown bits when you’re pouring the brown butter into the heatproof bowl.

This means that if a recipe calls for “½ cup melted butter” and you’d prefer to use brown butter in its place, make sure you actually have ½ cup of brown butter to use in the recipe.

In this case, I typically brown 9 or 10 Tablespoons of butter, then measure ½ cup (113g) to proceed with my recipe. This insures I have the proper amount of butter and sets me up for success from the get-go.

The only exception to this rule is if the recipe you’re using is already considering the loss of moisture and replacing it in order to have a successful recipe. Often times, you will see a recipe calling for brown butter also use a bit of milk. This is not a hard and fast rule, but a general addition to make up for the moisture loss.

Since even brown butter that has been allowed to come back to room temperature will always be a little looser than regular room temperature butter, it is best to use a recipe that calls for brown butter until you are familiar with the process of making that substitution.

KEEP IT MOVING– unlike when we cook sugar to make caramel sauce, you want to keep this mixture moving at all times. This is another way to insure even heating and also makes it so you can see the bottom of the pan through all of the foam and sizzling.

USE A LIGHT COLORED PAN– again, this does not make or break the success of your brown butter, but if you are still learning what to look and smell for, this is crucial in the learning process so you can see when your butter browns and stop it before it becomes burnt butter.

GRAB A HEATPROOF BOWL– have this ready to go, as you will be working quickly once the butter starts to separate and brown.

PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO THE HEAT– medium or medium-low heat only. This is not the place for high or even medium-high heat. If things are moving too quickly or aggressively, turn it down a smidge.

KEEP THE BROWN SPECKS– scrape every last one of ’em into your bowl! In the melted state, all of the milk solids fall to the bottom of the mixture. If you want to use the butter at room temperature, you will need to stir it once it has cooled to distribute the browned bits.

Use in:
• brown butter pumpkin cake
• pumpkin bundt cake
• brown butter cream cheese frosting
• brown butter cowboy cookies
• carrot coffee cake with brown butter glaze
• sage browned butter home fries
• browned butter turkey
• brown butter Rice Krispies treats
• butter pecan ice cream

Allow to cool and use as a spread for:
• bread
• pancakes
• waffles
• blintzes

Pour over:
• nuts
• popcorn
• potatoes
• pasta
• cooked vegetables

Use as a dip for:
• bread
• soft pretzels
• seafood (especially lobster and shrimp)

Add as a flavor enhancement to:
• mashed potatoes
• grilled cheese
• soup