Brown Butter Sage Sauce
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A quick and easy brown butter sage sauce or “burro bruno e salvia” in Italian, ideally tossed with butternut squash or mushroom ravioli, fluffy gnocchi and sprinkled with toasted bread crumbs or pine nuts!
This easy brown butter sage sauce makes the perfect sauce for pan seared scallops, salmon, chicken and steak. Not to mention it is quick and impressive!
Serve it gently tossed with butternut squash ravioli, farrotto or sweet potato gnocchi, then sprinkled with hazelnuts, pecans, toasted pine nuts or walnuts, even cranberries or brown sugar.
I personally love to drizzle it over these Italian roasted potatoes or crispy sage potatoes I make as soon as chanterelles are in season.
You can use green or purple sage in this recipe, I planted the purple variety this year and so that’s what I went it. Delicious! Since quite a few of you have asked for this recipe, I wanted to pop in today with a little guide.
How to Make Brown Butter Sage Sauce at Home
Easy breezy, and I can promise you it will be better than a restaurant because you control the quality of the ingredients. So don’t forget: organic grass fed butter and fresh sage only!
Although I am about to get on a plane to my favorite place on the Planet, Kauai, and dreaming of tropical beach drinks, I wanna suggest you make some butternut squash or pumpkin ravioli or these ricotta gnocchi to toss with this divine brown butter sage sauce. ‘Tis the season after all, plus it really make a lovely pair!
To make a simple brown butter “beurre noisette”, you would follow the exact recipe without adding any sage.
You will see the butter go through stages of different colors, from light to golden to nutty brown. The milk solids will cook the quickest and drop to the bottom of the pan. Leave those behind if you want, personally I happen to love to extra nuttiness it adds to the sauce.
Brown Butter Sage Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 stick organic salted butter (you can use cultured vegan butter instead)
- 14 leaves fresh sage or to taste
- freshly cracked black pepper to taste
- 1/2 lemon optional
- 3/4 lb butternut squash ravioli or potato gnocchi
Instructions
- Cut the butter into large pieces and add it to a light colored pan over medium low flame.1 stick organic salted butter
- As soon as the butter starts to foam up add the sage leaves, (make sure they are dry) and cook together for 3 to 5 minutes.14 leaves fresh sage or to taste
- The butter will foam up and start turning brown (noisette). Do not touch it, and do not stir.
- The moment the foam subsides remove from heat. The sage should be crispy by now. Hit it with a squeeze of lemon juice if you prefer and serve it over cooked ravioli or gnocchi.1/2 lemon
- Add the cooked ravioli to the butter sage sauce and gently toss to coat. When cooking the pasta make sure to reserve a little bit of the pasta water. Add a little bit of the reserved pasta water If needed to loosen up the sauce.3/4 lb butternut squash ravioli or potato gnocchi
- Serve with freshly cracked black pepper on top.freshly cracked black pepper to taste
Notes
- To make a simple brown butter "beurre noisette", you would follow the exact recipe without adding any sage.
- Vegan - swap the dairy butter for cultured plant-based butter such as Miyoko's.
Nutrition
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Hi. I made some spaetzel today. My herb garden is still going strong. The sage is going crazy. Soooo looked at some sage brown butter recipes and this one was exactly what I needed as a guide. I happened to buy the best butter at a market store the other day. It’s a Manitoba butter. Notre Dame butter. It’s so great. So my brown butter sauce turned out beyond great. The sage leaves did get crispy… so thanks!!! Easy yummy great. With it was a very odd brisket portion my hubby bought. Oh it was just fatty and uneven. So I braised like a pot roast. Turned out awesome.. had local onions and garlic. And herbs. And carrots I grew. And crazy great local corn. Sad this last month of such luxuries is almost gone. Thanks for this keeper recipe.. ❤️
Thank you. I was looking for a sauce that was different from creamy, tomato based or pesto. Family, including my son who is a cook, loved it:)
Holy smokes, this was absolutely delicious! Came across this recipe when searching for easy sauces that pair well with mushroom ravioli. This sauce did not disappoint! It’s so easy to make and even the crispy sage was tasty by itself! I only had a 10 oz pack of ravioli, so I used just a half stick of butter but used way more sage since my leaves were a bit small. The half stick of butter was honestly enough for me and I still had a little leftover sauce afterwards! Overall, I highly recommend and I’m totally saving down this recipe for future use! 🙂
Absolutely amazing and so easy. Used a very nice Vermont butter, fresh sage and added some shaved garlic at the very end. Absolutely will make again and have already sent this recipe to friends! Don’t hesitate to give it a try!
Excellent!!! Will be doing again!
HAVE MADE THIS MANY TIMES AND IT IS SUCH A HIT WITH MY FAMILY THAT THEY KEEP ASKING ME TO MAKE IT !!! THE ONLY THING I CHANGED WAS MAKING ONE AND HALF THE RECIPE FOR 4 PEOPLE BECAUSE EVERYONE WANTS EXTRA.
Love love love this recipe!
Excellence!! Thanks for new ideas for brown butter. Karen
Can you make this ahead and store it in the fridge or freeze it?
Technically yes Jim, but you’ll lose that crispy fried sage texture which is half the magic. Let me know if you try ~ Florentina
Husband loved it!
This was phenomenal on lobster ravioli. Absolutely delicious, especially with the squirt of fresh lemon and crispy sage leaves.
how much does a stick weigh? – for those of us outside of the USA
0.25 lbs
Wow! The epitome of “simple is good”! Actually, this was AMAZING! I made the sauce to go with some of my home made GF tortellini tonight and I literally loved every friggen bite. I made myself eat slowly so that I could savour it. The crispy bits of sage were bursts of flavour and the lemon really heightened the whole dish. I can’t wait to make this for guests. Thank you Florentina for an easy to follow 10 out of 10 recipe.
If I don’t have Sage leaves but have Ground Sage would this recipe still work you think? If so how much ground sage would I use?
I would not recommend making this with ground sage. The frying of the fresh sage leaves is what makes this recipe unique. I hope you will try it with the fresh herbs 🙂
Absolutely delicious! My new favorite pasta sauce!
Looks great! I plan to make this and pair it with homemade sweet potato gnocchi. This might sound silly, but do I remove the sage leaves before serving??
No you can eat the crispy sage leaves, they are very delicious!
I looked at several brown butter sauce recipes online and picked yours . It was the simplest and the directions were clear. .It was fantastic! I used it with butternut squash ravioli and dusted it with crushed amaretti cookies . Thanks for a great recipe .
I made pumpkin ravioli to go with this sauce and it was perfect!
I made this recipe for my pasta first course for Thanksgiving tomorrow and added the optional lemon and it turned out delicious! Definitely 5 Stars
This was delicious; we’ve made brown butter with sage before to go with buttenut squash ravioli, but in my husband’s words the lemon brightened it up, and he doesn’t overly love lemon! Definitely a keeper!
I added peas and carrots on top of mine for added veggies
I love brown butter sauce and I absolutely LOVE sage so I’m thinking that this is going to be my new favorite. I can’t wait to make it! Mmmmmmm!
Thanks honey, hope you love it as much as we do!