Before working in the food industry, I always wondered why my food never tasted as good as restaurants. I would try recipes over and over again and they would be good, but never restaurant good. It wasn’t until I was actively working in restaurants and going to culinary school that I discovered why. The answer was butter! The answer is always butter, isn’t it?

And not just butter in the form of sitting out to spread on your bread, but butter used in sauces in ways we just don’t think about very often at home. My favorite way being beurre monté.

What is beurre monte?

Beurre monté is a French technique where butter is emulsified into a small amount of water or liquid to create an easy sauce. I first learned about this in my fundamentals class in culinary school. Our professor was teaching us how to properly prepare vegetables in a beurre monté, and I was stunned, to say the least.

You mean to tell me that this simple combination of water and butter, when prepared correctly, creates an easy sauce in under three minutes that goes well on any vegetable or protein? This has been the answer to why restaurant vegetables taste so much better? It was shocking to me that the answer was so simple and could be achieved so easily. Yet I had never heard of it until that day.

We were taught that beurre monté is one of the easiest and fastest ways to finish vegetables. It allows the vegetable to be the star of the show while the butter emulsion complements it and enhances it.

After that day, I started seeing beurre monté everywhere. It is not always as thick as the one I have pictured here, but if you go out to a nice restaurant and get a buttered vegetable, it is most definitely finished in beurre monté.

• Start with a small amount of water or liquid. You do not need much to make this. If you had a full cup of water, you would need way too much butter to properly emulsify it. Aim for about 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup of liquid.
• Make sure the liquid is hot but no longer actively simmering. You cannot emulsify butter into boiling liquid because it will melt too quickly and split. Turn the heat off before adding the butter.
• The butter must be cold and cubed. This is essential for proper emulsification. Cold butter melts slowly as you whisk, allowing the fat to disperse evenly and form a stable sauce. If the butter is warm or at room temperature, it will melt too quickly and separate.
• Whisk continuously as you add the butter. This helps the emulsion form and keeps everything evenly combined.
• The more butter you add, the thicker it will get. If you want a thicker sauce, just keep adding cold butter.