How to Brown Butter for Cookies (and Why It's Worth It)

Brown butter is the easiest way I know to make a cookie taste like it came from a bakery. It's just butter, cooked a few minutes longer than usual, but it turns nutty, toasty and almost caramel-like. It's the secret behind my brown butter chocolate chip cookies and my Hershey's Symphony cookies, and once you learn it, you'll want to brown the butter in everything.

What is brown butter?

Brown butter is butter that has been melted and cooked until the milk solids in it toast and turn golden brown. In French it's called beurre noisette, or "hazelnut butter," because of its nutty smell and color.

Butter is mostly fat, with some water and a small amount of milk solids. When you cook it, the water boils off and those milk solids sink to the bottom of the pan and brown. That browning is where all the flavor comes from: think toasted nuts, toffee and caramel.

How to brown butter, step by step

1. Use a light-colored pan. A stainless steel or light-bottomed saucepan lets you see the color change. In a dark nonstick pan it's very easy to go from brown to burnt without noticing.
2. Cut the butter into pieces so it melts evenly. I use unsalted butter so I can control the salt.
3. Melt it over medium heat, swirling the pan now and then.
4. Let it foam. The butter will bubble, sputter and foam as the water cooks off. This is normal. Keep swirling.
5. Watch for brown flecks. Once the sputtering quiets down, little golden-brown specks will form on the bottom of the pan and it will start to smell nutty. This happens fast, usually within a few minutes of the foaming.
6. Take it off the heat right away and pour it into a heatproof bowl, scraping in all the brown bits. Those bits are the flavor, so don't leave them behind. The butter keeps cooking in a hot pan, so don't let it sit.

Watch me make it in the video below, from melting to the moment it's done.

How to tell when brown butter is done

Use your nose and your eyes. It's ready when the specks on the bottom are a deep golden brown, like toasted hazelnuts, and the kitchen smells nutty and toasty. If the specks turn black or it smells bitter or acrid, it's burnt. Start over, because burnt butter will make your cookies taste bitter.

Why you chill brown butter for cookies

Browning melts the butter, and melted butter won't cream with sugar the way softened butter does. For my cookies I chill the brown butter for about 30 minutes, until it firms back up. Then it creams with the sugar like normal butter, and the cookies bake up thick and fluffy instead of flat and greasy.

Brown butter also loses some of its water as it cooks, so brown butter cookies come out a little richer and more concentrated in flavor. Chilling the dough balls before baking, like I do in my brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe, helps them hold their shape.

How to use brown butter in the 3:2:1 cookie

Every cookie on this blog starts from my 3:2:1 cookie ratio: three parts flour, two parts butter, one part sugar. To make any of them a brown butter cookie, swap the ½ cup of butter for ½ cup of chilled brown butter. Pair it with dark brown sugar for the softest, chewiest cookie with the deepest caramel flavor.

Brown butter loves toffee, almonds, pecans, chocolate and a little sea salt. My two favorite brown butter recipes so far:

• Brown butter chocolate chip cookies with almond toffee chocolate and slivered almonds
• Hershey's Symphony almond toffee cookies with a melty chocolate square on top

How to store brown butter

Brown butter keeps in an airtight container in the fridge for about a week. Make a batch ahead, chill it, and it's ready to scoop and cream whenever you want to bake.