To make brown butter: Add butter to a pan over medium heat and listen for the water to stop evaporating. Once it’s quiet, pay attention to the pan and start checking the color, occasionally stirring and scraping the pan to release the browned milk solids that are gathering. If you don’t agitate them, they’ll burn really quickly before the butter has reached the desired color. So, what is the right color?
It depends. For cakes, cookies or biscuits, I like to go dark! I also like to leave all the flecks of the brown/burnt milk solids in for extra flavor hits. In some kitchens, the chefs prefer to sieve all of this out, but I’m not one of them.
There wil be some carryover cooking because once heated up, fat can hold and retain heat extremely well. So, once you have your desired color, get it off the heat before it accidentally heads into bitter territory. Remember, you can always heat it back up and brown it more if you need to. And don’t forget that the final weight of brown butter will be about 20% to 25% less than the original quantity of butter, so always do more than you need.
