How to Brown Butter, and How to Bake With It

To brown butter, melt it in a light-coloured pan over medium-low heat and keep stirring. It foams and crackles while its water boils off. When the crackling fades, the milk solids on the bottom of the pan start to toast. Take the pan off the heat once those solids are amber and the butter smells like toasted hazelnuts, and pour it straight into a heatproof bowl so it stops cooking. On the stove it takes about 5 to 10 minutes, depending on how much butter is in the pan.

What brown butter is

Butter is mostly fat, some water and a small amount of milk solids. US law defines butter as at least 80% milk fat by weight (21 U.S.C. § 321a), and King Arthur Baking puts its water content at about 15%. The milk solids are the proteins and the milk sugar, lactose.

Browning happens in two stages. First the water has to boil off, which is the loud, foamy part. Once it's gone, the butter gets hot enough for the proteins and lactose to react with each other. That is the Maillard reaction, the same one that browns toast and the edges of a cookie, and it turns the solids from pale to deep amber. The flavour it gives is toasty and nutty, a little like toffee.

The French name is beurre noisette, literally "hazelnut butter". In French cooking it is served as a warm sauce over vegetables, pasta, fish, omelettes and chicken, according to Wikipedia's entry.

How to brown butter on the stove

1. Cut the butter into tablespoon-sized pieces so it melts evenly.
2. Put it in a light-coloured saucepan or skillet. A stainless steel pan works well. In a dark or non-stick pan you can't see the solids change colour, and the colour is how you judge it.
3. Melt it over medium-low heat, stirring or swirling the whole time.
4. Keep stirring as it foams. It will bubble and crackle loudly while the water cooks out. Scrape the bottom as you stir, because the solids settle there and catch.
5. Watch for the noise to drop. When the crackling fades, the water is gone and browning starts quickly. The foam settles and you will see small specks on the bottom of the pan.
6. Take it off the heat when the specks are amber-brown and the butter smells nutty. Pour it into a heatproof bowl right away, scraping in the brown bits too, because they hold most of the flavour.

How long it takes

Most of the time goes into cooking off the water, so more butter takes longer. King Arthur Baking gives about 5 to 7 minutes once the butter has melted. Sally's Baking Addiction gives 5 to 8 minutes from when you start, and food scientist Christina Marsigliese at Scientifically Sweet gives 7 to 10. Use those as a rough guide and go by colour and smell to decide when it's ready.

High heat is how it burns. Marsigliese also notes that a rushed batch gives yellow fat with browned specks in it, rather than amber butter that tastes of them.

How to keep it from burning

The danger is the last minute. Once the water is gone, nothing holds the temperature back, and brown butter becomes burnt butter in seconds.

• Don't leave the stove in the last few minutes.
• Have the heatproof bowl ready beside the pan before you start. The hot pan keeps cooking the butter even off the heat, which is why it goes into the bowl straight away.
• Judge by smell as much as by colour. The brown butter cookie recipe on this site puts it this way in its FAQ: when it smells toasty and nutty, it's done, so take it off the heat at once.

If the specks have gone black and it smells bitter, you have gone too far. Scientifically Sweet suggests straining out the black bits through a fine sieve or cheesecloth. If the bitterness has already got into the fat, start again with fresh butter.

Can you brown salted butter?

Yes. Scientifically Sweet says salted and unsalted butter brown with equal results. Unsalted is the usual choice for baking because it lets the recipe set the salt, and both cookie recipes on this site use it.

The same source adds that butter with more water takes longer to brown and gives you less fat at the end. A good block of butter is worth it here.

Brown butter, ghee and clarified butter

All three start with melting butter and cooking off its water. What differs is what happens to the milk solids:

• Clarified butter: the milk solids are skimmed and poured off before they brown, leaving clear yellow fat.
• Ghee: cooked longer so the milk solids caramelise and flavour the fat, then strained out, as Wikipedia's clarified butter entry describes.
• Brown butter: the milk solids are browned and left in the butter.

That last difference matters at the stove. Clarified butter has had its solids removed, and the same Wikipedia entry gives it a smoke point of 252 °C (486 °F), against 163 to 191 °C (325 to 376 °F) for regular butter. Brown butter keeps its solids, so treat it as a flavouring, not a frying fat.

Baking with brown butter

Put the water back, or give the dough time

Browning takes water out, and a recipe written for regular butter expects that water. King Arthur's rule is to add 1 tablespoon (14 g) of water or another liquid for every half cup (113 g) of butter you brown. Without it, they say, the result can be greasy, "especially in something like chocolate chip cookies". Measured by weight, Scientifically Sweet puts the loss at about 18%.

The brown butter chocolate chip cookies here take a different route. They brown 3/4 cup of butter and add no water. Instead, the dough rests in the fridge for at least an hour, ideally overnight, so the flour can hydrate, and the recipe's FAQ says to add a teaspoon of milk only if the dough truly won't hold together. Use whichever one the recipe you're following calls for.

Let it cool to just warm

Hot brown butter melts the sugar, and the cookie recipe warns that this gives greasy, flat cookies. The pistachio chocolate chip cookies do the same: they brown 168 g of butter over medium heat and let it cool in the pan for a few minutes before the sugars go in.

Match the butter to the recipe

King Arthur Baking says brown butter can go straight in where a recipe uses melted butter. If it calls for softened or cold butter, chill the brown butter first: it sets rock hard in the fridge. For softened butter, let it sit out for about an hour and give it a stir.

How to store brown butter

Pour it into an airtight jar, scraping in the brown bits, and refrigerate it once it has cooled. Scientifically Sweet gives it a week in the fridge and King Arthur says several weeks, both in an airtight container. For longer, Scientifically Sweet suggests wrapping the cold, set butter and freezing it for up to 3 months.

Because the water is gone, brown butter sets harder than regular butter once chilled. Warm it gently to melt it again, or leave it at room temperature if the recipe wants it soft.

Where to use it

On this site, brown butter is the base of the brown butter chocolate chip cookies and the pistachio chocolate chip cookies. It works the same way in anything that takes melted butter, such as blondies, banana bread or the butter for crispy rice treats. On the savoury side, spoon it over pasta, fish or roasted winter vegetables, as French cooks do. Brown butter with a few crisped sage leaves is a classic over pasta and squash.