Every once in a while, a kitchen technique comes along that sort of blows your head off your shoulders and changes up your routine forever. Like browning butter. Sure, we’ve all accidentally slipped a pat of butter into a too-hot skillet and seen it immediately turn into a freckled liquid that discolors our scrambled eggs. But when you brown butter on purpose and incorporate that nutty, toasty flavor into baked goods, it’s really a next-level kind of thing.
There are a few components in butter: butterfat, milk solids, and water. When butter is melted and then allowed to continue to cook, the water eventually evaporates, leaving behind the butterfat and milk solids. Once their cushion of water is out of the picture, the milk solids get even hotter and begin to brown, sinking to the bottom of the pan. These deeply golden bits are what give browned butter its intoxicating fragrance and flavor (as long as you remove the pan from the heat before the nut-brown bits burn and turn bitter).
There are a few recipes in this book that call for browned butter, and it couldn’t be simpler to make. Set a small saucepan or skillet over medium-high heat. Cut the amount of unsalted butter needed for the recipe into small chunks and place them in the pan. Melt the butter, and once it’s completely melted, let it bubble and sizzle away for a couple of minutes, swirling the pan occasionally. Listen closely—once the sizzling starts to quiet down, that means that the water has evaporated, and the milk solids will begin to brown.
Swirl the pan and tip it from side to side to examine the color of the solids, and give the butter a good sniff. Pull the pan from the heat when the solids are a deep golden brown and the butter smells nutty and wonderful. The whole process of browning butter takes 5 to 7 minutes. Stop the browned butter from cooking further by immediately pouring it into a heatproof bowl to cool. When the butter is cooled, use it in any recipe that calls for melted butter.
You can also use browned butter in recipes that call for the butter to be in solid form, like frostings, cake batters, and cookie doughs. Simply pour the browned butter into a heatproof container (such as a small metal baking pan) and freeze for several minutes until the butter is completely firm. Scrape the solid browned butter out using a spoon, proceed with the recipe as usual, and then wait for people to swoon over your baked goods.