Brown Butter

Butter cooked past melted to nutty and amber, and stopped before it burns. Different handling for savoury and for baking.

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Yield
scales to any amount
Active
8-10 min
Total
10 min
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Beurre noisette. Not a recipe so much as a five-minute technique that two dozen other recipes depend on.

Ingredients

scales to any amount

Method

  1. Prep even pieces

    Slice the butter into even tablespoon-sized pieces so it melts at one rate.

  2. Heat fully melted

    Melt it in a light-coloured skillet or saucepan over medium heat, swirling occasionally. Light-coloured matters: you are judging this by colour.

  3. Simmer popping and sputtering

    It will boil, pop and sizzle as the water cooks off. Stir constantly and scrape the sides and bottom.

  4. Simmer fine foam over the surface

    When the popping suddenly quiets, a fine foam covers the surface. That is the water gone.

  5. Finish amber flecks, coppery liquid

    Push the foam aside and look at the bottom for amber flecks. The liquid turns coppery amber.

  6. Finish deeply nutty

    The moment it smells deeply nutty, take it off the heat.

  7. Serve off the heat for good

    Pour it into a heatproof bowl straight away, flecks and all, so it stops cooking. The pan alone will take it past nutty and into burnt.

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