How to Brown Butter
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Let’s make Brown Butter! If you’ve ever wondered how to make brown butter, you’re in luck! It’s EASY and adds gorgeous flavor to so many recipes.
Welcome to our Be A Better Baker series! In this series of baking tutorials, I’ll teach you foundational skills of becoming a better home baker, plus introduce you to fun techniques, baking secrets, and quick tips that’ll help you around the kitchen.
Our first easy tutorial is all about how to brown butter. And boy are you in luck, because browned butter is one of the most delicious things on this planet. It adds a caramelly, nutty flavor to brownies, cookies, rice krispies treats and more. It’s basically liquid gold!
Even better, it only takes a few minutes to make, and our step-by-step tutorial will walk you through the whole process. Let’s dive in!
What Is Brown Butter?
Brown butter (beurre noisette) is simply butter that’s gone through a sort of caramelization process. It gets its signature color and flavor by gently melting the butter until the solids in the butter caramelize and brown.
So what makes brown butter different from regular butter? During the cooking process, the butter fat separates from the milk solids, excess water evaporates, and the milk solids will caramelize/brown. (This browning process is known as the Maillard reaction.)
What Does Brown Butter Taste Like?
I’ve often heard browned butter described as tasting nutty, but to me it’s a lot more like caramel. It’s got deep, sweet almost brown sugar-like notes that make it a delicious addition to sweet or savory recipes.
How To Make Brown Butter, Step By Step
As always, you can find the full recipe, with ingredient amounts, detailed step-by-step instructions, and tips in the recipe card below.
- Add butter to saucepan or a skillet (preferably a light-colored pan with a heavy bottom)
- Whisking or stirring continuously, melt the butter over medium heat or medium-low heat (depending on how hot your stove runs–you don’t want it to burn!)
- Once the butter is melted, continue stirring. After 6-8 minutes, the butter will begin to foam and bubble. (The exact time will vary based on how much butter your browning.) Keep a close eye on how the butter looks and smells here, as it can go from browned to burned fairly quickly.
- When the butter looks deeply golden brown, you can smell its nutty aroma, and you can see that the butter solids are starting to brown, remove the pan from the heat.
- The butter will continue cooking in the hot pan, so transfer it to a bowl to cool down or pull it off the heat a minute before you think it’s fully done. The brown bits will settle toward the bottom of the pan as it cools.
- Use right away or refrigerate in an airtight container to use later!
PRO TIP: For best results, use a light colored pan (like light colored stainless steel or a white enamel pan) to make it easier to tell when your butter has browned. Using a dark pan will make judging the color difficult.
How do you know if butter is brown?
A few things to really pay attention to here are the look, smell, and taste.
- LOOK: The butter will foam slightly on top, and after a few minutes of foaming, you’ll notice that the butter underneath has a deeper more golden, almost honey-colored tone. (Like a deep amber color!)
- SMELL: It should smell slightly sweet and fragrant. It won’t smell like movie theater popcorn butter any more. Instead, it’ll have sweeter notes, almost like brown sugar, toffee, or caramel.
- TASTE: If you carefully taste a tiny bit (it’s hot!), you’ll taste caramel-y or nutty notes.
Yummy Ways to Use Brown Butter (sweet & savory!)
The best part of brown butter is definitely using it! The rich flavor of nutty brown butter can be used in savory AND sweet applications. (Though, I’ll be honest: we’re biased toward sweets and dessert recipes here!) Here are few of our favorite brown butter recipes to try:
- Add to baked goods that call for melted butter. The caramel-y notes will be lovely!
- Cookies! Use for Gluten-Free Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies,
- Add to Gluten-Free Brown Butter Brownies
- Use it to make the BEST Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats.
- Mix into savory dishes, like vegetables, mashed potatoes, or pan sauces with herbs.
- Use in pancakes, muffins, or waffles, especially anything with warm flavors, like pumpkin, apple, banana, or cinnamon. Think Pumpkin Snickerdoodles & Brown Butter Banana Bread. SO GOOD!
- Add to granola or oatmeal.
- Try it In frosting, like Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting or Brown Butter Buttercream.
- Pour over popcorn instead of regular melted butter. It adds SO much flavor!
- Stir into pasta dishes, like ravioli. It’s especially great with sage!
- Serve over steak, scallops, or fish.
FAQ + Tips And Tricks For The Best Brown Butter
Can You refrigerate Brown Butter?
Yes! Brown butter can be refrigerated. Because of its structure, just know that it will solidify in the refrigerator. You can then use it solid, or you can melt it back down over low heat as needed later. Brown butter will last at least 1 week in the refrigerator. (Some folks claim it’ll keep 2-4 weeks, but I’m always one to play it safe.)
Can You Substitute Brown Butter With Anything?
Structurally, you can substitute melted butter for brown butter in batters and doughs that call for brown butter. But from a flavor perspective, you will definitely lose the caramel-y flavor by substituting regular butter. (In recipes that also have brown sugar, consider using dark brown sugar instead of light brown for a deeper flavor.)
What Are Those Brown Flecks At The Bottom Of Brown Butter? Are They Bad?
The flecks, or almost sediment-like specks you might see at the bottom of the pan as your brown butter cools are caramelized milk solids. These little brown bits aren’t a bad thing! As long as they’re still a deep golden brown color (and not black!) and the butter tastes sweet and nutty, you haven’t burned it and it’s just fine! That said…
Do You Have to Strain Brown Butter?
Some recipes call for brown butter to be strained to remove any stray brown flecks. This is mostly for presentation. Unless your recipe calls specifically for you to strain it, you don’t have to strain brown butter to use it. (I never ever do!) I love the look. If you don’t, feel free to strain it before using!
Recipe Card
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How to Brown Butter
Equipment
- 1 Light Colored Saucepan It'll be easier to see the color of the butter in a light-colored pan
- 1 Whisk
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter more or less, as called for in your recipe
Instructions
- Add butter to the saucepan or a skillet (preferably one with a heavy bottom)
- Whisking or stirring continuously, melt the butter over medium or medium-low (depending on how hot your stove runs–you don’t want it to burn!)
- Once the butter is melted, continue stirring. After 6-8 minutes, the butter will begin to foam and bubble. Pay attention to how the butter looks and smells here, as it can go from browned to burned fairly quickly.
- When the butter looks deeply golden and you can see that the butter solids are starting to brown, remove the pan from the heat. (The butter will continue cooking in withe residual heat of the hot pan, so transfer it to a heatproof bowl to cool down or pull it off the heat a minute before you think it’s fully done.)
- Use right away or refrigerate to use later! Brown butter will keep in an airtight container in the fridge up to 2 weeks. (No need to strain out the little brown bits, unless your recipe calls for it.)
Notes
- LOOK: The butter will foam slightly on top, and after a few minutes of foaming, you’ll notice that the butter underneath has a deeper more golden, almost honey-colored tone.
- SMELL: It should smell slightly sweet and fragrant. It won’t smell like movie theater popcorn butter any more. Instead, it’ll have sweeter notes, almost like brown sugar or caramel.
- TASTE: If you carefully taste a tiny bit (it’s hot!), you’ll taste caramel-y or nutty notes.
Video
Find the recipe:
sweetsandthankyou.com/brown-butter/
I have a delicious recipe for gingerbread cookies frosted with icing made with burnt or brown butter. So yummy for the holidays!
Oh yum! I love using browned butter for glaze on oatmeal cookies! It’s the best!
This belongs in every cookie
Does this work better with salted or unsalted butter?
It works equally well! It just depends on the flavor you’re going for. I personally always prefer salted butter, but if you’re salt sensitive or prefer to be more in control of the salt content, you can use unsalted butter instead. 🙂