Brown the Butter for the Best Graham Cracker Crust
Graham Crackers is the queen of the crumb world, but she could never make pies, cheesecakes, and brownies without the support of her unwavering partner, butter. Butter is an essential fat that acts like a glue to help the sugar and all those little crumbs stick together, and also adds flavor and acts as a heat conductor to give the crust its shape when baked. It’s already a great pairing, but you can make your crumb crusts even better with one simple trick: brown the butter first.
Butter browning is the simple process of cooking butter in a pot or pan for about 10 minutes until the milk solids begin to brown. Once the oil has reached this state, take it off the heat and use it for cooking, dipping bread or, of course, stirring it into crumbs. The process is simple but the taste is great. The oil already tastes great, but once you toast it, it looks like oil in HD. The richness is intense and concentrated, along with hints of nuts and caramel: everything that is great when paired with crackers or other cookie crumbs.
To make the most decadent butter crumb crust for your dessert, start with your favorite crust recipe, graham cracker, or cookie crumb . Measure out the oil with an extra tablespoon or two. The browning process uses up a lot of water through evaporation, so you end up with less than what you started out with and you’ll want to account for that in your measurements. Cut the butter into pieces (to speed up the melting) and place it in a saucepan or skillet over medium heat. While you can use any pot or pan for this, I like to use a stainless steel pan so I can keep an eye on browning, but any light-coated pan will do the trick. The butter will melt and begin to steam, bubble and foam. At this time, you can mix or twist the pan, but this is not necessary.
When the bubbles subside, you will see the milk solids settle to the bottom of the pan and begin to brown. Once you’ve achieved a light brown color, take the oil off the heat and measure it out in a heat-resistant measuring cup to make sure you have enough oil for the recipe. Pour it into the rest of the ingredients and continue with the recipe.
Note that toasted butter can burn, so don’t move away from it while cooking. I recommend taking it off the heat a shade lighter than the color you’re looking for because the transfer heat will continue to toast the milk solids. By the way, don’t forget about dry milk! It may look like a nasty sticky mess that you want to get out of your crust, but those toasted bits are where all the flavor is. Your finished dessert will have a noticeably stronger nutty creamy flavor, and you may not be able to resist adding brown butter to desserts. Pair this crust with cheesecakes, spicy desserts, anything with nuts and chocolate.