Foolproof and Easy Browned Butter

Cut the butter up into pieces. Have a fine-meshed sieve or strainer set on a heatproof bowl lined with paper towels.

Use a pan or frying pan that you are confident won't burn or stick. Add the butter and melt the butter over low heat.

Tip: If you are melting more than 100 g of butter, use a pan with high sides. Never put the butter in the pan in one big lump - cut it up into smaller pieces so that it melts easily.

When the butter has melted, turn the heat up to medium-high. The butter will have large bubbles at first.

If you keep looking at the butter, the bubbles will become smaller, and the level of the butter will start to rise. It'll be ready very soon.

Keep watching the pan, and you'll see that it starts to brown right away. Turn the heat off once the butter starts to brown.

Don't leave the butter in the hot pan. Immediately pour it into the lined sieve you made ready in Step 2, and strain it through. Make sure to strain off the bitter bits.

If you look at the butter in a clear bowl, properly strained browned butter is really beautiful. And it smells indescribably wonderful.

The color is like this. It's ok if it's too pale, but if the butter is too dark, it will have an acrid fragrance and flavor that will get transferred to the batter of whatever you're making. If it's your first time making browned butter, you may want to strainig it off a bit early.

Warning: If you leave the butter in the hot pan (Step 7), it will continue browning. So take it out and strain it immediately, being careful not to burn yourself.

Tip: If you're afraid of straining the hot butter right away, you can lower the temperature of the butter by pressing the bottom of the frying pan on a cold moistened kitchen towel first.

I brown a restaurant size 450 g block of unsalted cultured butter at a time and froze it. I highly recommend this!!

To brown 450 g of butter, a wok is just the right size. If you use a smaller pan, the butter may spill out, so be careful.

As long as you have this browned butter made, you can cream it and use it instead of regular butter when making poundcake.

Baked goods made with browned butter taste so much better than ones made with plain melted butter.

Use browned butter for the taste and fragrance, and regular butter for its superior chemical reaction when baking. If you can master this you'll get the best results.