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one simple step can completely change how your baking tastes. Richer, deeper, and so much better. Hi, I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef with over 20 years experience, and this is one of the easiest ways I upgrade flavor in my baking. We're going to brown butter, use it in a recipe, and show you exactly what it changes. Browning the butter is not something that should be feared. It is very simple, you just need the right instructor, like moi, to tell you how to do it. So, here's tip number one. Start out in um like a frying pan. It's much easier and faster than doing a small pot. I did a small pot before, it took 15 minutes. So, we're going to start out in a shallow frying pan to give us that surface area to cook faster.
Number two is not a dark coated pan. You want something that is uh not coated, like maybe stainless steel, cuz we need to be able to see what's going on in the bottom of the pan. If you use nonstick and it's a black bottom, you won't be able to see. Now, we're going to add in our butter. Use your favorite type of butter. I use salted. Pan on. Another tip, medium low. You are not helping yourself by cranking up that heat, trying to make it go faster. All you're going to do is burn your butter. And this is not about burning, it's about browning. So, medium low controlled heat. Your next tip is patience. You have to be patient. Butter is expensive, and if it gets burned, then unfortunately, there's not much we can do about it. So, while
the butter's melting, I'm going to show you the different stages of what we're going to look for so we can tell when it's not done, when it's perfect, when it's overdone. You also have to know when you've gone too far. This is a fantastic skill. Once you know how to brown butter, you can use it in any recipe you want. It really makes the flavor so much better when your baked goods. Just this, if you just watch this part of the video, you've already learned a lot, because learning how to brown butter correctly is a skill, and once you know how to do it, you can apply it to any of your recipes, sweet or savory. Another tip, don't walk away. And I'm talking about even for a minute
because you really want to watch what's going on. Now, here we go. This is the first step in browning butter. It's starting to foam. It's bubbling up. It's simmering. Now, here's what we have to do. I'm using a spatula. You can use a wooden spoon. Spatula, I think it's kind of handy cuz it gets to the bottom of the pan. Stir. If you just let the brown butter simmer by itself without stirring, what will happen is the milk solids in the butter will burn on the bottom of the pan. And when that burns, it tastes very bitter and it's pretty much unusable. So, a little stir.
Nothing too aggressive. Make sure you get all around the sides. That simmering is kind of therapeutic. So, there you go. We're around 2 minutes in. Look at this. You see it changing slightly? Do you see the way the foam is getting a little bit darker? We can see it getting a little bit more golden brown. I'm going to turn that down a small bit. I don't want this to get aggressive on me. Then I hear the tip. This is not browned enough yet. It is getting brown. There's going to be some flavor there.
Look underneath here. See that liquid? See what happens in a heavy-bottom saucepan is that the beauty of them is that they retain heat. So, when you remove this from the pan, it actually keeps on cooking. Keeps on browning. If you're doing eggs, if you're you're cooking anything. So, look at this. I just removed it from the heat there for a minute. I kept on stirring. When this foam dies down, see how it's kind of gone almost like a peachy color? Nutty. I can smell it. Smells toasted. It smells nutty. We can see underneath it is not burnt. It's almost like a golden brown. The foam is disappearing. Here I have a bowl. Now, this is a really important step. Have a bowl beside you. Pour it
into the bowl. Stop the cooking. So, remember factor in if you're using a heavy-bottom saucepan, it's retaining extra heat. So, that's why you really have to be And here's the thing. Maybe you are in somebody else's house making brown butter and you don't have your own pans. When you follow all the steps that I just mentioned, no matter what pan you use, for me not dark, you'll get good results. So, look at this. I'm going to swirl it around a little bit, let it cool down, but it can't get any browner right now because it's cooling down. And it's out of the pan. So, this is what correctly browned butter looks like.
It smells, like I said, nutty and toasty, but then also kind of caramelly. Why would you not want to use this in all your recipes? Okay, but listen to me, your brown butter lesson does not stop there. You're getting good value for your money today cuz here's what we're going to do. Look at that. I'm going to put it back in the pan and I'm going to show you how quickly it can go from perfect to burnt. Now, a lot of what this comes down to is smell and sight. And as a professional chef with over 20 years experience, I've seen it all, I've smelt it all. I know exactly when I've gone too far. So, it is a little bit of practice. And sometimes, you know what they say, you have to crack a few eggs.
Sometimes you have to burn a little butter to be able to, you know, to learn how to do it right. So, Joey, have a look in here. It's getting browner. It's getting darker. It's still usable at this stage, okay? I can smell it. Um but I can smell it's also about to turn. See this? Watch this. Seconds. Do you see that? From brown to almost black. Burns butter solids, brown butter that is unusable. It tastes smoky, it tastes gritty, and it tastes burnt. Unfortunately, I had to ruin some very lovely butter to be able to show you what not to do. There you go. And of course, smoke is a telltale sign. So, that burnt one is unusable, but lucky for me, I have a brand new one over here over on the counter. So, let's
head over here and start to make our lovely cookies. So, here is our lovely butter. No joke, it actually smells like caramel. Um what you want to do is just make sure that it's not hot when you go to use it. So, I'm going to put it in my bowl, and we're not going to want to waste a drop. This is why spatulas come in so handy. Liquid gold in there. Next, we're going to add in our dark brown sugar. The reason I use dark brown sugar for my cookies is because it gives you that extra flavor. Also, gives you moisture, so it has like a double effect. And these are the kind of
cookies that are like gooey bakery style cookies. Um and that needs brown sugar. So, we do a little bit of white for sweetness, but then you also do brown for moisture, and for those caramel tones. Now, here's a little trick that I do that Army kind of taught me this. Rather than putting your salt into your dry ingredients, put it into your like your sugar and butter mix. And it really just kind of gets to melt in there. Mix it all around, and it just combines all the way through the base of the cookie. And I definitely notice like better flavor when I do that, better saltiness. And you definitely need for an awesome chocolate chip cookie, you need some saltiness.
Just combine those together. Into this, we are going to add a room temperature egg and some vanilla extract. Use the good stuff. My chocolate chip cookies have to have vanilla extract. Mix them until they're combined. And you can kind of see that there's no more brown sugar lumps, and the sugar is kind of dissolving. You just know your cookie is going to be good if that is the base of it. So, my favorite type of chocolate chip cookie is gooey in the middle and like a little bit almost like undercooked, and then lightly crisp around the outside, like just set in the middle. And to get that, you do not want baking powder in your recipe.
Baking powder will give you cakey results. If you like a cakey chocolate chip cookie, you do you. It's not my favorite thing. What I like to do is add in baking soda into my flour. Mix it around, and then add it into the rest of the batter. So, baking soda, what it does is kind of the opposite effect of baking powder. It will work as a leavening, but it will kind of keep your center kind of gooey. Also, the top of your cookie, that lovely kind of deep crinkle that you see in beautiful chocolate chip cookies that you see online, that's what baking soda will do. It will give you that crinkle. And if you age your cookie dough, and by that I mean
once you've mixed it, you put it in the fridge for a few days, that crinkle on top will get even deeper and the center, the gooiness, will be even more defined. Mix in your dry ingredients, and then I'm going to add in my bittersweet chocolate. I love bittersweet chocolate. I do recommend bittersweet chocolate for this recipe. Semi-sweet's okay. I wouldn't do dairy. I will say that my 6-year-old has always eaten bittersweet chocolate his entire life, and it's his jam, and he's going to get one of these cookies. And then just mix that in. For my chocolate, I buy a bar of good quality chocolate, I chop it up, and
that's what I use. I prefer not to use chips in certain types of cookies. This is one of them. The benefit of using a bar of chocolate in a chocolate chip cookie is a few things. Number one, if you buy a bar, you can control the quality. If you want 85% cocoa solids, you want 90%, you want 72, that's up to you. And also, what happens when you melt this chocolate, it doesn't have any stabilizers in it like the way chocolate chips do. So, when it melts in the oven, it'll pool and it will kind of flow throughout the cookie, where a chocolate chip will not do that. It will hold its shape and stay in the one spot. And for me, a chocolate chip cookie, you have to have like those little and big bits of chocolate all the
way throughout just melting. I do everything in one bowl just like this. And these are actually my Gemma made magic bowls. Okay, lovely. There we go. That's our cookie dough. Cookie doughs always benefit from chilling. And also, because this had melted butter in it, we do want to chill it for a little bit, so your chocolate chip cookies don't end up spreading too much. So, I want to pop it into the fridge, let it get nice and chilled, and then we can scoop it. So, for this dough, it's already kind of firm, so just chill it for like 30 minutes to let that fat solidify and make it easier for me to scoop. You can, however, once you make your dough, what I like to do is scoop it, then I will
like leave it age in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, and then I also freeze the balls. So, it just makes life so much easier when it comes to entertaining. I've got a 6-year-old. Somebody always needs a chocolate chip cookie. It just is really handy to have cookie dough in your freezer. It's actually my mom's secret, cuz if you invite me somewhere where there's going to be kids, I will show up with cookies. And they will be the best cookies you ever had. For this dough, I scoop it around 2 Tbsp, which is kind of a tablespoon scoop with the same measurement on bottom as it is on top.
Shape them into balls in your hands. Just so they bake down nice and evenly. Make sure you're getting some good chocolate chip chunkage in there. I always like to point them towards the top, so you really get a nice big chunk in the middle of the cookie. My gosh, I can smell this. If you want to eat a cookie dough and maybe like sans the egg, this is it. So, when we do food photography for my website, we definitely I would say embellish the look of some things. And if you really want to make that awesome bakery-style cookie at home, just like you see in cafes and in restaurants, this is what you want to do. You scoop your cookie, and then any of the little bits of chocolate that are floating around your bowl, just put it
right there on the top. That just makes sure that every cookie has a hero piece of chocolate. That's how the pros do it. Okay, lovely. My oven is on. It's really nice and hot, so let's get these guys in there. So, this cookie dough makes enough cookies for two trays. When I bake two trays of cookies, I always do fan assist, so the fan can circulate around the cookies and they bake evenly. So, that is 350° F for around 8 to 10 minutes. Be really careful. Err on the side of caution. Take out a little bit early, let them sit, relax, and continue to cook. If you're only doing one tray at a time, do 375 and do it for the same amount of time. Okay?
Now, on that note, while they are in the oven, brown butter hotline. These are some good questions about brown butter. People are very curious. So, the first question is, can I make brown butter ahead of time? The answer is yes. It's actually a really smart move. Chefs in kitchen would do that all the time. Keep it in your fridge and then let it get to room temperature or whatever the texture is that you need it. I'm guessing you could even freeze it and it'd be even handier. Our next one is, can you save burnt brown butter? It is a tricky one because the flavor goes all the way throughout. Your best solution, if it's not too bad, pass it through a coffee filter. Anything remaining in the bowl
you can use and then discard the burnt solids cuz that's really where the nasty flavor is. This next question is a fantastic one and I love the way you think. Can you make brown butter in the microwave? And you know I am all about microwave recipes and the answer is yes, you can. It's actually really easy and there's less chance that you'll actually burn it. Put it into a microwave-safe bowl and you're going to want to heat it up in increments. Take it out, whisk it. You'll see it starting to turn color. Keep an eye on it. Know that it continues cooking outside of the microwave and wait until it gets that golden brown color, then remove it. It will take a few minutes, but it's a really fantastic way to do
it. And you can do it in my metal Gemma made bowls cuz they go straight in the microwave. So, I know these cookies are perfectly done because I can see those centers are just set. For those gooey cookie lovers, here's a tip. When they're out of the oven, take them straight off the tray. If they sit on the tray, they'll continue to cook. They look absolutely gorgeous. They've got a lovely texture top with loads of crinkles. And as you can see, we have that very strategic big chocolate chip on the top of each one that is melted beautifully. As you can see, these are not your average cookie. These are next-level, intense-flavor, perfect-texture cookies straight out of a professional kitchen. The extra step
we took making the brown butter has really paid off. It has definitely taken my chocolate chip cookie game to the next level. This might be one of the best chocolate chip cookie recipes on the internet. I'm just saying. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this recipe and I'll see you back here again really soon.
