How to make beurre noisette (Browned butter)
Beurre noisette, burnt butter, browned butter, hazelnut butter or caramelized butter; all names that mean the same thing. A delicious way to add a little something extra to your butter. I will tell you how to make beurre noisette in this article!
How to make beurre noisette?
The way to make beurre noisette is the same way you make clarified butter. You take a block of butter and slowly melt it in your pan. It’s really not much more complicated than that. As the name suggests, beurre noisette is often used in French cooking, but if you look for browned butter you will also find quite a few brown butter recipes that are not French at all.
Gently brown
Once the butter melts, the key is to stay close to the pan. As with making a caramel, it can suddenly go too fast and burn your butter. It’s helpful to use a white pan or a light-colored pan so you can easily see how far your butter has gone. A dark pan actually makes this impossible.
When it starts to color to a golden brown color and you smell a nutty aroma (hence the name hazelnut butter), you know your beurre noisette is almost done. Remove from the heat just before you think the color is right. The browning process will continue in the pan due to the residual heat. What actually browns is the milk solids at the bottom of the pan. If you take out the milk solids you’re left with clarified butter.
What can you do with beurre noisette?
You can use beurre noisette in many ways. It’s not called liquid gold for nothing. It is delicious as part of something baked. I like to use it in a lot of my bundt cakes. It really gives the flavor something else. In fact; when the recipe calls for melted butter you could keep it on the stove a little longer and make it into beurre noisette instead. See what that does to the flavors of your cake! Try it the next time you make a banana bread for instance. In fact you could use it in almost any recipe that normally requires regular butter. It works in savory dishes and equally well in sweet dishes. (Try these waffles with burned butter!)
It’s also super delicious served with pasta (you must have seen the ravioli with sage and burned butter maybe) and once the butter cools down you can whip it up. But more on that later.
Tips for making beurre noisette
- It all starts with good butter. Choose a good quality unsalted butter. This will benefit the end result. it’s important to use unsalted butter as salted butter has a different chemical reaction and will not give you the desired results.
- The light pan I’ve already told you about, but make sure to use that. A Dutch oven usually has a light inside so that would be good to use too if you don’t have a small sauce pan.
- To make the butter melt evenly, cut it into small pieces and keep stirring it in the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula.
- Also, don’t turn the heat too high. Medium heat is ideal and allows you to control the melting process.
- To stop the cooking process immediately, pour the butter, when it is the right color, into a cold heatproof bowl.
Beurre noisette or browned butter
Ingredients
- 250 grams unsalted butter buy good quality!
How to make beurre noisette
- Cut the butter into small pieces.
- Place it in a saucepan (preferably a white saucepan, so you can see when it has the right color) and let it melt gently, stirring constantly.
- Stir just until the butter begins to brown and smell nutty. Remove from the heat just before you think it is brown enough because the butter is still cooking.
Notes
Nutrition Information per portion
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
