Julia Child's Simple Tip To Prevent Butter Burning In Your Pan

If you want rich and flavorful dishes, cooking with butter is a sure way to give your meals that home cooked taste (especially if you go for some of the best butter brands at the grocery store). But due to its relatively low smoke point, butter has its cooking limits. When you sauté or cook at high temperatures, you typically want to use an oil or fat that has a high smoke point — meaning that it won't burn while cooking, which can not only produce smoke but unpleasant flavors, too. While butter is delicious and can bring a creamy, caramelized richness to meals, its low smoke point makes it brown quickly. But thanks to Julia Child, there is a way to overcome this annoying obstacle and still get that buttery flavor you desire.

Child's suggestion is simple: add a bit of olive oil to your butter. Just a drop or two can help prevent the butter from browning too quickly (she also suggested using clarified butter, which involves straining out the fat's milk solids, though that process takes more effort and time). Together the olive oil and butter will enhance your recipes and offer that rich, dairy flavor while also boosting the smoke point of what's in the pan.

When sautéing vegetables or browning meat, reaching for a stick of butter is the obvious choice when it comes to adding flavor. Butter has an unmistakable character that is hard for any other oil or fat to recreate. It's also helpful for when you want to brown food and give it that caramelized color — sometimes, you do want those milk solids in butter to toast a bit and add even more flavor, as when you add it to mashed potatoes. However, you have to be careful and keep your stove top on low in order to keep it all from burning.

To achieve that rich, nutty taste in your recipes without sacrificing flavor, adding olive oil to your pan offers you the best of both worlds. Even better, you may wish to use regular olive oil here and not more expensive extra virgin olive oil. Whatever you are sautéing will still get that delicious buttery flavor but it will also get a savory, fruity aroma from the olive oil (depending on the variety), making for a cooking duo that truly can't be beat.