Browned Cultured Butter
In the previous post we made the most delicious, Cultured Butter from local Texas heavy cream. In today’s post we are kicking it up a notch by browning that beautiful butter and using it as the foundation for one of my all-time fan favorite cookies: browned butter, Nutella stuffed, chocolate chip cookie with sea salt. This cookie is a chocolate chip cookie lover’s dream. It is ridiculously rich, chocolatey and over the top decadent. Truly a cookie that I believe everyone should experience once in their life.
Let’s start with our butter. Browning butter is heating butter to a gentle simmer to evaporate the extra water it contains and to caramelize the milk proteins. It sounds fancy but trust me this is not a hard thing to do. It takes less than ten minutes to brown butter but you need to dedicate that time to stirring and watching your butter brown evenly. The minute it starts to change color it will brown and burn in less than a minute. Absolutely no distractions, you don’t want burnt butter for this recipe.
As the butter melts slowly over medium heat it will begin to bubble up and foam. This is the water butter contains cooking off. Butter contains up to 15% water, with the majority being fat and around 5% milk protein. What your left with after the water evaporates is milk solids and fat. In foodie terms: an absolute concentration of butter flavor. It’s the milk solids at the bottom of the pan that we want to pay close attention to. They will be fairly pale yellow until the end.
You will notice the color begin to change to a light golden color, this is when you can turn down the heat, stir continuously, and watch your butter VERY closely to reach the desired golden amber color we want. Low and slow so you don’t burn the milk solids and at this stage they can burn very quickly! Take the pan off the heat sooner than later, the butter will continue to cook even after you take off the heat. So you want to take it off the heat just as it starts to brown, if you take it off the heat and realize it could go a little darker, you can always put it back on low heat to cook.
When the butter reaches a golden amber color, take immediately off the heat and pour into glass container to stop the cooking process and cool. It will smell insanely good when it is done, almost like a warm crusty bread or toasted hazelnut aroma.
Make sure to scrape all the browned bits on the bottom of the pan into the container. These are little flavor bombs and will give an irresistible depth of flavor to our cookies. If you have any good bread or cinnamon raisin bread, I highly recommend using a slice to soak up all the buttery remnants left in the pan, make sure none of it goes to waste. My toddler and tiny sous chef loved every bite of browned butter and bread for a mid-morning snack.
There you have it, a delicious batch of browned butter. It will stay good in your fridge for several months and is a great addition to savory as well as dessert recipes. The first time I ever had browned butter was with sweet potato gnocchi, fresh sage, and Pecorino Romano, talk about simple and exquisite flavors. But our next focus with our browned butter involves one of my highest selling cookies I made in my home bakery, Nutella stuffed chocolate chip cookies with sea salt. I have gotten the most requests for this cookie, and it feels only right to share the recipe in light of the Mother’s Day holiday coming up this weekend. Recipe coming soon, happy baking!
Browned Butter
Ingredients
- 2½ sticks unsalted butter I am using the cultured butter I made in the previous post but any butter will work just fine. Make sure it is unsalted.
Instructions
- Place chopped cold butter into a medium sauce pan.
- Turn heat on medium to medium high and melt the butter. Stir occasionally.
- Continue to heat and stir butter until it begins to foam and bubble.
- Cook for a few minutes more. The foaming will subside and you will see pale yellow bits forming in the melted butter.
- Once you see the butter begin to turn golden in color turn the heat to low and continue watching and stirring. You want to take off the heat as soon as it deepens in color.
- Once you see a golden amber color, take off heat and pour into glass container to cool.
- Scrape brown bits from pan into container and allow to cool overnight in fridge prior to making cookies.
