Description

If you haven't tried brown butter before, it is pure magic. This ultimate guide will teach you how to brown butter, how to make it in advance and store it, and how to take advantage of the amazing nutty flavour that it gives to baking. Plus, check out my tip on making mega brown butter with the addition of milk powder!

Ingredients

Salted or Unsalted butter, cold from the fridge is fine (use the amount the recipe calls for)
Milk Powder (optional, see notes, I usually do 20g milk powder per 120g butter but this can vary)

Instructions

Note - this can go quickly, so watch your stove temperature and the butter closely. If you are worried it is going too quickly, remove from the heat to stop the cooking process then return once the stove temperature has been lowered.
Place the butter in a medium pan, and place over medium heat. Cook until the butter has melted, and then continue to cook, swirling the pan often and stirring with a whisk, until the butter foams and turns golden brown and nutty - this should take 3-4 minutes at medium heat but may take longer if you have your temperature lower (which is totally fine, do what you are comfortable with!)
The butter will go through phases as it cooks - it will melt and then start to foam, then become quite bubbly and noisy as the water starts to cook off. When it is getting closer to being done the large bubbles will turn to more of a foam and the noise will quiet down. The butter will start to smell very nutty.
Once the butter has browned, transfer it (including all the brown pieces, that is where all the flavour is!), to a jar or bowl.
Use as desired.
To add milk solids to the butter, melt the butter then add the milk solids and whisk to combine. You will have to watch the brown butter extra carefully and whisk well as the solids can clump up. The cooking process is the same.

Notes

As a general rule of thumb I do 20g milk powder to 130g butter for adding in milk powder but feel free to adjust!

Salted or Unsalted butter? This is up to you. I love the taste of browned salted butter so that is what I usually make, but unsalted works great too.

You can brown your butter further than I have for this blog post - but it is a fine line that takes some practice. I like mine super well toasted, but for the purpose of teaching I have not done that because it is too easy to burn, and burnt butter is so sad. Play around with what you are comfortable with, the best way to do this is to turn the heat right down at the end and watch carefully.

If you need a visual guide, you can watch me make this on instagram