How to Brown Butter

I have been hooked on brown butter since discovering it at the start of lockdown 2020. It’s the ultimate one ingredient shortcut, adding nutty deliciousness and toasted flavours to baking, as well as savoury dishes, such as pasta.

What do you need?

There’s really nothing to it. All you need is butter, a light coloured saucepan and a spoon and you’re all set.

Top Tips

1. Cut the butter into pieces. This ensures even cooking.
2. Use a light coloured saucepan. This allows you to see the colour of the butter changing, meaning you can catch it when it’s perfectly browned.
3. Don’t use a high heat. Why risk burning your beautiful butter?! Don’t rush it. You have more control over the butter colouring using a medium heat.
4. Be brave. You’ve got to be a bit brave when making brown butter. Hold your nerve until you see those brown specks.

Let’s make brown butter

Step One: Melt butter in a light coloured saucepan

Butter is made up of butterfat, water, and milk proteins. It’s these proteins that we’re actually browning when browning butter.

Add your butter to a light coloured saucepan. This allows you to see the butter’s colour more clearly as it browns.

Heat the butter gently over low heat until it has melted completely. I like to stir mine with a wooden spoon throughout, to make sure that nothing is catching on the bottom or sides of your pan.

Step Two: Boil off the water

Butter contains around 15% water, which has to be cooked off before the temperature of the fat can get high enough to brown the milk solids. The water starts to evaporate at 100°C, and things start to get a bit noisy. The butter will begin to bubble and splatter. At this point the bubbles on the surface will be large.

Step 3: Brown the butter

The spluttering will start to die back after about five minutes and become foamy as all the water has evaporated. Now the browning begins. This is where you need to pay attention. Keep stirring to make sure no milk solids get caught on the bottom or sides of the pan.

Use your nose! You should now be able to smell a nuttiness. This is the milk solids beginning to brown.

Things should be much quieter now. The surface will be covered in a foam. This makes it almost impossible to see the colour of the butter underneath. But this is when the magic really happens. Just move the foam to the side and keep an eye on what is going on below the surface. And remember to use your nose!

Worth noting that it’s only the milk solids that turn a dark brown. The fat will get darker, but not as much as the solids.

Hold your nerve! You have to be brave when making brown butter.

When you’ve reached your desired level of browning, pour the butter into a heatproof bowl. Don’t forget the browned milk solids. If you left it in the pan, you run the risk of the butter continuing to cook, and it could easily turn from your perfect browned shade to a bitter burnt butter.

Congratulations – you’ve made brown butter! Told you it was easy. Can’t wait to see what you all do with it.

Enjoy x