I have a confession: I don’t love fall as much as a lot of folks do. I don’t break out my sweaters and boots before I absolutely have to and I wouldn’t be caught dead with a Pumpkin Spice Anything before October 1. I can’t help it, I’m a spring and summer girl through and through. I am, however, head-over-heels for the flavors and aromas of fall cooking.
To me, autumn means pairing apples with onions, preparing Sunday dinners in the slow cooker and reaching for the rosemary, thyme and sage in my herb garden. And of course, autumn means cooking with butternut squash. My Brown Butter & Sage Butternut Squash Pasta brings together two of these classic fall flavors!
In each “Make it Snappy” column, I invite you to take advantage of a short cut offered to you by the grocery store and this is one that I have been preaching for years: pre-cubed butternut squash. In fact, it’s become a bit of an inside joke with my followers on Instagram. If you have ever gone toe to toe with a butternut squash then you know exactly why. They are large. They are unruly. They are stubborn and they are flat out dangerous. Peeling and cubing a butternut squash seems straight forward, but in that simple process you’re likely to lose a finger! The density of the squash and the force required to slice makes moving a knife through it choppy and inconsistent. If your knife slips, you’re risking serious injury. I have concluded that it’s not worth endangering myself when there is perfectly good, pre-cut squash on the grocery store shelves. You may pay a bit more, but when you think about the time you’ll save and the medical bills you’ll avoid, you may find that it’s worth it in the long run!
I am not a professionally trained chef, only a seasoned home cook. But brown butter sauce can be a bit tricky if you’re not familiar with the process and I wanted to share my experience with you.
BROWN BUTTER 101
- When it’s time to make the sauce, be ready to stay close by. It can come together quickly and if you step away, you risk burning the butter.
- The goal of a brown butter sauce is to heat the butter enough to evaporate the water, which will cause the solids to separate and toast. The toasted solids are how the brown color and nutty, rich flavor are developed.
- It’s best to use unsalted butter. Because of the way the butter separates, the salt can become concentrated in the solids and ruin the flavor.
- I advise using a skillet with a light color interior, such as stainless steel or a light cast iron like Le Creuset. The key to the butter is watching the color, so a dark base will make it difficult to see the color changing. I like to make mine in a dutch oven which leaves plenty of room to toss the pasta in the butter sauce before serving.
- Cut the butter into smaller chunks before melting, 6-8 pieces. If you put the whole stick in, it won’t melt evenly and some butter may burn while the rest is still melting.
- Resist the urge to crank up the heat! You need the butter to foam, meaning the bubbles will release the water, but butter also burns easily. On a scale of 1 to 10, stay in the 3-6 range. If the color isn’t as deep as you’d like, add time, not heat.
- Watch the sauce! The butter solids will look like sand forming in the butter. In my experience, they’ll start to turn orange, then a rust color and finally a deeper red brown. As soon as you see this deeper brown color, remove the skillet from the heat. You do not want the solids to turn black!
- Keep stirring the sauce for another minute after you’ve pulled it from the heat. It will continue cooking off the heat and you want to be sure the solids don’t cook too long and become black.
- Trust your nose, when the sauce is brown and it smells rich and nutty, you’re all done!
Find the complete recipe here at my Make It Snappy Column: Brown Butter & Sage Butternut Squash Pasta
