How to brown butter and keep the toasted bits
Read the color on the bottom of the pan, and check whether your recipe weighs butter before or after browning.
Use a light-colored saucepan if you have one. Cut the butter into pieces of similar size and put a heatproof bowl beside the stove before you start. Melt the butter over moderate heat. As the water cooks off the butter may bubble and foam; move it around the pan so you can see the specks settling underneath.
Watch those specks rather than the color of the foam. When the milk solids are an even toasty brown and smell nutty, pour everything into the waiting bowl. Scrape in the brown flecks. The pan stays hot off the stove and can carry a good batch past brown to bitter if you leave it sitting there.
Read the ingredient line before measuring. “100 g butter, browned” starts with 100 g of ordinary butter. “100 g browned butter” asks you to weigh the finished butter, which weighs less than its starting amount because water has evaporated. If the recipe gives a starting weight and an instruction to replace the lost water, follow that instruction. Cool to the state the recipe needs before mixing.
