Brown Butter Sage Sauce

Brown butter is a traditional French sauce made simply of heated, unsalted butter. Called beurre noisette in French, which translates to hazelnut butter, it is thusly named for its rich, nutty flavor. It’s often used in pastry making, and is classically paired with pasta in northern Italy. It can be used as a sauce for ravioli, gnocchi, and tortellini—you really don't need to add anything else to it, but you can dress it up further with Italian sausage, shaved Parmesan, or breadcrumbs, if you prefer.

Brown butter does especially well when paired with autumnal ingredients like chanterelle mushroom, pumpkin, and butternut squash. However, butternut squash ravioli and sweet potato ravioli would make excellent pairings. You can also serve it simply with fettuccine. This sauce would also be lovely drizzled over a firm baked white fish like cod or a simple roasted chicken.

Why Unsalted Butter?

Unsalted butter is preferable for several reasons. Salted butter tends to foam up more, which makes it harder to discern its true color as it's browning. In addition to being able to control the salt content precisely with unsalted butter, it's also fresher. Unsalted butter has a shorter shelf life because salt acts as a preservative.

Why is the Butter Not Browning?

Butter can appear to take a long time to brown if it's thrown in as a whole stick. It's highly recommended that you cut it up into five or six pieces so that the butter can brown evenly. Otherwise, if thrown in whole, some of the butter can start to burn while the solid part is still warming up.

Brown Butter Versus Regular Butter

Brown butter is differentiated by its markedly different color and flavor. It also is devoid of the water content that regular butter has. Brown butter should be a deep golden color with mahogany-colored milk solids at the bottom of the pan. It also has a toasted, nutty aroma that is distinctly different from regular butter's creamy flavor profile.

Butter is made of water, milk solids, and fats. Brown butter, however, is missing the water content of regular butter. This is because when butter is heated, the water in it ultimately evaporates. The butter becomes clear instead of opaque, and milk solids start to appear (they look like the crumbs that might remain in a pot of oil if you'd fried chicken in it, for example). If you were to strain out the milk solids at this point and not heat the butter further, you would have ghee or clarified butter.

Can I Substitute Dried Sage?

Yes, however, it's not ideal. If at all possible, splurge on fresh sage for this recipe. Its earthy and delicate quality is a defining feature of this dish. However, if necessary, you can substitute 4 teaspoons of dried sage for 1/4 cup of fresh sage. However, it may be counterintuitive to use less dried sage since dried herbs are generally less flavorful than fresh herbs. When dried, sage does indeed lose some of its brightness, which can accentuate its bitterness. This is why we recommend using less.

Hidden Flavor

The browned milk solids are actually where most of the flavor in brown butter comes from, so you definitely want to leave those in and scrape them all from the pan. On the other hand, these can burn quickly, so if your butter is tasting at all burnt, which is very easy to do, you can strain these out to try and minimize that flavor.

Make Ahead

Yes, you can definitely make brown butter ahead. Letting the butter completely cool before transferring it to a glass container is recommended—a Mason jar works well.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO MAKE THIS BROWN BUTTER SAGE SAUCE

A Great Garlic Press

A Medium Saucepan

A Cool Herb Chopper