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Beurre Monté: The 2-ingredient sauce you never knew you needed

Making a beautiful Beurre Monté will add so much flavor to your meal

Lindsay Parrill
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There are very few things on earth as sacred and as beautiful as butter. Spread the heavenly miracle on just about anything at all and it’s instantly improved. Give me your whipped, your balled, your boarded. There isn’t a form butter can take on that I will not devour with adoration. If they made butter popsicles, I’d be the first in line at the ice cream truck. So it goes without saying, I love a well-made, velvety butter sauce. Of these, there are many, each unique and as pleasant as they come. They can be flavored with just about anything from vinegar to wine to herbs to egg yolks. But did you know that you can make a delightfully French, beautifully savory sauce just by combining butter and water in exactly the right way?

Beurre Monté, directly translated from French, means to “mount with butter”, meaning to top, or finish a dish with the sacred ingredient. Often chefs will “mount” a sauce or a soup with butter as a final touch, adding texture and richness to their dish. This sauce is a play on that, in a sense. Beurre Monté’s uses are plenty, and its flavor extraordinary. And if you know how to make this delicious butter sauce, you will have a very handy, very tasty skill in your culinary tool belt.

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Beurre Monté tips and tricks

  • Be sure to keep the heat low and steady in order to maintain emulsification. If your sauce gets too hot or too cool, it may break. But…
  • If it does begin to break, you can whisk in a little cool water re-emulsify the sauce.
  • Because Beurre Monté can be a bit finicky with consistency, it’s best to make this right before serving. If you do make it ahead of time, be sure to keep your sauce warm before serving.
  • If you have extra, it can be refrigerated and reheated, but only for use as melted butter. Alternatively, from this stage, the butter could also be clarified.
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Beurre Monté recipe

You’ve probably made flavored butter sauces before. As we’ve established, they are truly otherworldly in their deliciousness. But this sauce in particular is especially magical because of its versatility. Use it not only as a sauce for your favorite dishes, but also as a buttery warm holding place for your meats to rest, or a gentle poaching pool for delicate fish. Not only will your dishes be infused with decadent butter flavor, but cooked gently in the most exquisite way possible.

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Ingredients:

  • 4 tablespoons – 1 pound of butter, diced into even pieces
  • Water

Method:

  1. In a saucepan, bring water to a boil.
  2. Reduce the heat to low and begin whisking the butter into the water, one piece at a time to emulsify.
  3. Once the sauce has emulsified, gradually add pieces of butter until you’ve reached the amount of sauce and consistency you desire.

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Lindsay Parrill
Lindsay Parrill
Contributor
Lindsay is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Le Cordon Bleu, San Francisco, from where she holds a degree in…
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