Anywhere butter goes, brown butter goes better, enhancing the aroma and flavour of foods from savoury sauces to roasted veggies and chocolate syrup.

In this post, I'll show you how simple it is to make this one-ingredient recipe. It's really just about knowing all the stages that it goes through while cooking, so you're ready to take it off the heat at the right moment. I'll walk you through this with images and narrative, and there's even a time lapse video if you truly want to geek out.

Beware though, making brown butter is addictive. Forget its ultimate versatility, the scent alone will send you back for more. I wish the internet had scratch and sniff because this stuff smells like toffee — deep, delicious, nutty.

This caramel-perfumed wonder is made possible with very little effort and time, and no fancy equipment, just a simple saucepan. The lowdown — brown butter is just regular butter that’s cooked until it releases water and the milk solids caramelize.

Making Brown Butter: The Four Stages

The graphic below depicts 1/2 pound (about 227 grams) of butter being browned. With that quantity, the whole amazing alchemical process takes about 18 minutes from start to finish. Note that while the graphic captures the highlights, there’s also a time lapse video that shows proportionally how long each of the cooking stages takes.

It might seem intimidating at first, but after you’ve made brown butter once while observing the stages it goes through, it’ll be something you can easily make while doing other things in the kitchen.

What is Brown Butter Used For?

Brown butter elevates so many dishes. When in its liquid state, it’s perfect to drizzle over mashed potatoes or roasted vegetables, anything from Brussel sprouts to yams — really any vegetable that tastes good with regular butter is going to be even better drizzled with brown butter. Or use it to add depth and richness to soups, like this Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with brown sugar and brown butter.

It’s also a delicious addition to sauces, such as this Pineapple Brown Butter Teriyaki Sauce. The brown butter gives the sauce a lovely richness that works well against the acidic pineapple juice.

Brown butter also goes beautifully with herbs and spices. Pasta or gnocchi with brown butter and sage sauce is a classic pairing. Rosemary and thyme make great options, too, either for a pasta sauce, or to make a fragrant herbed brown butter. Or combine it with fresh ginger, as in my recipe for Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Ginger Brown Butter. 

Another way to use brown butter is on your morning oatmeal — you can just drizzle some on. Or make a quick sweet and buttery sauce by combining 4 teaspoons brown butter with 4 tablespoons maple syrup over low heat.

Staying on the breakfast track, brown butter’s delicious with the turmeric and the warm spices featured in Moon Milk Farina.

Finally, it makes an incredible addition to this Brown Butter Chocolate Syrup, which is perfect for sundaes, mochas and chocolate drinks.

Let’s look at a few things to note when it comes specifically to baking with brown butter.

Tips for using brown butter in baking

To swap out brown butter for regular butter in baking, ensure that the brown butter is in the same state that the recipe calls for. Reheat it over low heat to make it liquid again if necessary.

At room temperature, brown butter will have a consistency close to peanut butter.

If the recipe calls for solid butter, refrigerate the brown butter overnight. Note that it will get a bit more solid, but it won’t ever return to the same solid state as butter.

Brown butter has less water in it than regular butter, so if you are swapping it out for regular butter add 1 tablespoon of extra liquid for each 1/4 cup of butter.

Time Lapse Video: Making Brown Butter 

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