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Brown Butter

Welcome back! 
Today, we have instructions for a cooking essential: Brown Butter. This is used very commonly in baking, especially with cookies and cakes, but can also be used elsewhere to get that aromatic, nutty flavor that is a lot deeper than normal butter. Plus, this recipe also encompasses preparing clarified butter, which is good for recipes like this Dover Sole.

Brown Butter

Makes about 80 grams

Ingredients:

  • 1 stick butter (8 tablespoons or 110 grams)

Directions:

  1. Put the butter in a pot on the stove at small heat. You can cut it to speed things up.
  2. Once the butter is covered in very little bubbles but the milk solids at the bottom have not browned, you have clarified butter. At this point, the water has evaporated and the milk solids are at the bottom, so what's left in the middle is your clarified butter.

  3. Once the melted butter is light brown and starts to have a nutty flavor, but before the milk solids start burning, you have brown butter!

  4. Take the pot off the stove and put it in cold water to prevent it from cooking any further.
  5. Filter out the mixture.
We used this most recently in our Financier recipe, and will be using it soon with Madeleines, where the brown butter makes the flavor so much better. It's not even like it's sweeter or richer, it seems like the flavor has more... dimension. It's definitely worth making!

-Chefpo

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