Reflections on brown butter

[ned]

I made lamb shoulder chops for dinner tonight and was reminded of another place in which brown butter plays a key role.

In (very) short tenures at Ducasse and Jean George as well as Seeger's in Atlanta, I had the opportunity to watch and learn a method of cooking meat that I think is really fantastic.

A well seasoned piece of meat, say a ribeye (but a lamb shoulder chop works great too) is seared in grapeseed oil (or another high temp oil) in a heavy pan, preferably copper or cast iron. After you get color on one side, turn the meat and take the pan off the heat. Add lots of butter, some thyme and a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed but not too much and still in the paper. Bring the pan back to the heat and tilt it. With a spoon, baste the meat. The butter should be somewhere between foaming and brown. In fact it should be in both states depending on where it is in the pan. The trick is to keep the butter from burning and the way to achieve that is by carefully monitoring the heat and keeping the fat moving. If it starts to burn, get the pan off the heat, pour off the fat and add new.

The brown butter is infusing with garlic and thyme and fond. The meat is bathed in the infusion. There are other things happening that I have some theories on but that Mr. McGee would be much more qualified to address.

In this month's New Yorker, Bill Buford mentions that Gordan Ramsay's cooks use this method also. I think it's a pretty widespread practice. At its heart is the careful handling of browned butter.

[alanamoana]

A well seasoned piece of meat, say a ribeye (but a lamb shoulder chop works great too) is seared in grapeseed oil (or another high temp oil) in a heavy pan, preferably copper or cast iron.  After you get color on one side, turn the meat and take the pan off the heat.  Add lots of butter, some thyme and a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed but not too much and still in the paper.  Bring the pan back to the heat and tilt it.  With a spoon, baste the meat.  The butter should be somewhere between foaming and brown.  In fact it should be in both states depending on where it is in the pan.  The trick is to keep the butter from burning and the way to achieve that is by carefully monitoring the heat and keeping the fat moving.  If it starts to burn, get the pan off the heat, pour off the fat and add new.

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a.k.a. arrozé

also, financiers! only with browned butter, please.

[ned]

A well seasoned piece of meat, say a ribeye (but a lamb shoulder chop works great too) is seared in grapeseed oil (or another high temp oil) in a heavy pan, preferably copper or cast iron.  After you get color on one side, turn the meat and take the pan off the heat.  Add lots of butter, some thyme and a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed but not too much and still in the paper.  Bring the pan back to the heat and tilt it.  With a spoon, baste the meat.  The butter should be somewhere between foaming and brown.  In fact it should be in both states depending on where it is in the pan.  The trick is to keep the butter from burning and the way to achieve that is by carefully monitoring the heat and keeping the fat moving.  If it starts to burn, get the pan off the heat, pour off the fat and add new.

←

a.k.a. arrozé

also, financiers! only with browned butter, please.

←

I've heard it called baise? Something like that. I assumed it meant that the butter is kissing the meat. . . ?