BROWNED BUTTER
Place either salted or unsalted butter (see my update below) in a 1-quart saucepan over medium-low heat. You'll need about a tablespoon of butter per serving. Whatever you do, do not leave the stove! Once all of the butter has melted, start moving the pan in a constant gentle swirling motion over the burner. At first you'll see a bit of scum floating on the surface. About the time that the scum disappears, the butter will start to give off a wonderful nutty fragrance. As soon as it smells nutty and the color starts to change slightly, remove the pan from the heat and keep swirling the pan while you're holding it. The butter will turn a golden brown color and you'll see tiny specks of brown on the bottom of the pan. Do not cook the butter any further or it will burn.
Serve over hot cooked vegetables such as cauliflower, broccoli or Brussels sprouts, etc.
Per Tablespoon: 102 Calories; 11g Fat; trace Protein; trace Carbohydrate; 0g Dietary Fiber; trace Net Carbs
UPDATE: Yesterday I tried to make browned butter using unsalted butter for the first time and it turned out quite strange. The butter never turned brown and I just ended up with black specks sitting in the bottom of clear melted butter. It did have a slight browned flavor, and didn't taste burnt, but it sure looked odd. It's not the best photo but, if you take a look at my Cauliflower with Browned Butter recipe, you can see that the butter is a nice light brown color. This is how browned butter should look. If anyone has any suggestions as to why this might have happened, let me know. Is it possible to get nicely browned butter using unsalted butter or is the salt somehow necessary? I don't usually use unsalted butter but I'd bought some for a recipe and didn't want it to go to waste.
UPDATE II: Someone suggested that the salt does make a difference but just about every recipe I found online calls for unsalted butter. This is very puzzling. I may have to give unsalted another try and see if I get the same results. I used a good brand of butter too. It was Challenge brand unsalted butter. I saw in interesting idea on a few of the sites that I looked at. They suggest browning a whole pound of butter and keeping it in the fridge to use for drizzling over veggies or cooking eggs. I don't know how well that would work for me though. I never seem to make enough and I'd probably end up dumping the whole pound's worth over my batch of broccoli!
UPDATE III: I've finally figured out what was causing the black specks. I was cooking it over too high heat. It will take a few minutes longer but I've changed it to medium-low heat.