Brown Butter Stuffing Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

What kind of butter is best for brown butter? ›

Use unsalted butter so your browned butter is not too salty. Start with room-temperature butter so it doesn't splatter or burn while it's melting. Use a high-quality, European-style butter for the best flavor. Brown your butter over medium to medium-low heat and whisk frequently to prevent burning.

Brown butter is regular butter cooked a bit longer than usual until the milk solids toast and turn brown. You'll cook the butter just past the melting point. Browning butter creates a magical toasty flavor you don't get with regular melted butter.

In its purest form, brown butter tastes like toffee, a little sweet and savory with a heady caramel aroma. Chemically, brown butter tastes so good for the same reason a seared steak does: a process called the Maillard reaction that describes the breakdown of animal proteins into hundreds of flavor compounds.

Brown butter, also known as beurre noisette, is made by cooking unsalted butter long enough to turn the milk solids brown while cooking out any water present in the butter. Often described as tasting nutty or toasty, it has a deeper, richer, more intense flavor than melted or clarified butter.

Browning butter is pretty quick. Place the pieces of butter in your light-colored pan. Turn the stove heat to medium. Medium heat ensures the butter cooks evenly, an important factor in the success of this easy process.

A stick of butter (US) weighs 113 g. Post browning it will weigh about 83 grams. 1 (one) tablespoon of butter weighs 14 grams so you're losing almost 2 tablespoons (28 g) of butter through the browning process. This happens because liquid in the butter evaporates.

But the process of browning butter—simple as it may seem—requires some particular vigilance. A few seconds too long on the heat and this deeply flavored butter can turn from creamy and caramelly to bitter and burnt.

Brown butter isn't one of those things you can start cooking and walk away from. It requires your total attention, which means stirring the butter every once in a while. Without stirring, the butter has more potential to cook unevenly, and the milk solids can stick to the bottom of the pan and eventually burn.

Brown butter is delicious over pasta but it's made to be served with fish. Make a simple pan sauce with brown butter, plus herbs, spices, capers, or the like.

How to brown butter on the stove? ›

Melt the butter: Melt the butter in a medium light-colored frying pan or skillet over medium heat. Swirl the pan occasionally to be sure the butter is cooking evenly. Watch carefully: As the butter melts, it will begin to foam. The color will progress from lemony-yellow to golden-tan to, finally, a toasty-brown.

Butter contains a good 13 to 17% water, which has to go before the fat's temperature can rise enough to brown the milk proteins. Once the butter reaches a temperature of 212°F, the water in the butter starts to evaporate much more quickly. As a result the butter will start to bubble and splatter dramatically.

Stay close to your pan because the trickiest part of browned butter is getting it just brown enough—not too dark or too light. Too light, and it won't have the characteristic nutty flavor and aroma. Too dark, and it may start to taste (and look) burnt. Your nose will be the first to tell you are browning your butter.

Feel free to substitute brown butter into any recipe that calls for melted butter. Note that if the recipe requires solid or softened butter you'll need to refrigerate the brown butter so that it solidifies before using it.

Brown butter adds a rich, slightly nutty, caramel flavor to baked goods that makes everything extra delicious. If you haven't made brown butter before, don't you worry.

Use unsalted butter. You can brown salted butter, but all of the salt gets concentrated in the milk solids and depending on how you're using it, it can ruin the flavor. Cut up your butter into chunks and place them in your pan. Turn on the heat to medium and let the butter melt.

While good technique is always important in the kitchen, much of the success of browning butter comes down to the type of butter you are using. For the best results when browning, you'll want to use high-quality butter because it has more fat. Browned butter is the result of butter undergoing the Maillard reaction.

So while it's possible to brown salted butter, there will be no browned-milk-solid flavor benefit from it and it's actually more difficult to avoid burning salted butter compared with unsalted.

Brown butter can be made with either salted or unsalted butter. Most often it is made with unsalted.