Brown Butter Sauce

I’ve made brown butter for a few things. Here’s a great list of the different ways you can use it. I need to go down that list and try each one. I’ve done it a few times for eggs. Cookies. And one of my favorite ways was doing a brown butter buttercream icing that went on top of an Earl Grey tea cake. Things are always better when you caramelize them. And that’s pretty much what you are doing when you brown butter. It gives it such a rich, nutty flavor.

For the Brown Butter Sauce, I’m making today, I’ll be using it on pasta.

I took a stick of butter and melted it in a medium saucepan. Once it was melted, I added about a Tablespoon of garlic paste. I cooked it over medium heat, stirring it to make sure the garlic incorporated smoothly. Cook the butter mixture for 5 to 8 minutes or until the butter has lightly browned. You’ll want to skim off the foaminess occasionally.

Remove the pan from the heat source. I poured my butter and garlic into a small mason jar before adding a mixture made up of basil, oregano, parsley, thyme, and black pepper. It was about a teaspoon of each herb. Normally, I would recommend fresh, but at the time I made this, none in the garden was ready to use. Mix the brown butter and herbs well. The herbs tend to settle at the bottom.

You could actually drizzle this over some popcorn and it would taste fantastic. I’d probably add some Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning as well afterward. For now, I am going to toss the Brown Butter Sauce with some thin spaghetti noodles. Add a few shakes of red pepper flakes, some shredded Romano Parmesan cheese, and a splash of lemon juice.

You can go as simple or fancy as you want with this. For myself, I just ate the noodles. If I had the ingredients, I’d probably do some chicken along with this. Maybe some spinach or some asparagus. There’s no limit to how fancy you could get. Heck, maybe even some mushrooms. Oh, man, now I’m starting to drool. The brown butter will harden up if you let it cool to room temperature, but it’s not that hard to heat it up and use it.

So I absolutely did it. The next day after making this brown butter sauce, I used some to make something with the excess noodles. As you can see in the top 2 photographs, that’s what the butter looks like when it solidifies. It smelt so good, guys. I put some in the pan and carmelized some onions with some marinated mushrooms from a jar. I reheated the noodles in the pan with the onions and mushrooms then added some cream and more cheese. It was so good.

There’s a strong chance I’ll be having some popcorn with this tomorrow. Since I did suggest the idea already, I might as well have some too! I still have quite a bit of the butter leftover.