Last Updated on 8th February 2022 by
Is there anything better to dip grilled fish filet into than lemon butter sauce? This delicate, light sauce blends its tart citrus flavors with creamy, sweet butter, creating a match made in heaven.
The very best lemon butter sauces are made at home from scratch using fresh ingredients. That sauce is delightful when it’s drizzled over a piece of tilapia or some steamed vegetables. Taste the difference in your tender cooked broccoli and artichokes after dipping them in this sauce.
Knowing how to make lemon butter sauce for chicken or pasta or some other dish really helps you expand your ability to make a variety of dishes or take an average dish and make it incredible.
Instead of trying the same old sauces on your foods, why not try making something you haven’t made before and see how it enhances the flavor?
How to Make Lemon Garlic Butter Sauce
Let me show you how to throw this sauce together quick and simply.
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
- 1 grated garlic clove
- 1/4 cup of butter
- 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt
- A pinch of parsley
- A pinch of black pepper
Directions:
- Place a saucepan on the stove top over low heat. Melt the butter in the saucepan.
- Sprinkle in the salt and garlic and allow to cook for a full minute.
- Take your
pan off heat and add in the lemon juice. Mix together and then add in black pepper and parsley to season.
You can try it out on a variety of dishes to see what it does for them. You now know how to make lemon butter sauce for pasta or fish dishes. It can be used for most any steamed vegetable, and it makes your food more complex, adding some tartness and sweetness to it.
How to Make Lemon Butter Sauce
Once you’ve made the base lemon garlic butter sauce and you find that it’s too pungent or powerful, you may want to skip the garlic completely. If you leave that out, then there’s no need to heat up the sauce on the stove to make it. It comes together a lot faster, but of course it’s not as flavorful.
I think the garlic works best if you’re making this with pasta, but it’s less necessary when you’re making a seafood dish. If you’re adding this to a seasoned dish that already includes garlic, you want to leave the garlic out of the lemon butter sauce. It’s just a matter of mixing the base ingredients together when there’s no garlic involved.
If you want to add the garlic back in later, you can always use garlic powder and dissolve it into your sauce for a quick addition. That’s a great method for how to make lemon butter sauce for salmon. If you try it without the garlic and you’re not happy with the way it works with the salmon flavor and texture, try adding in a little garlic powder and see if that does the trick.
How to Thicken Lemon Butter Sauce
If your sauce is too runny and liquid, and you want it to be a little thicker, there are a few ways you can do that. To thicken up your sauce, you could use flour, but I don’t recommend it. That will cloud the sauce and detract from the flavor, making it blander.
Instead, I recommend adding cornstarch instead. You should use about a tablespoon of cornstarch for every cup of sauce. Don’t mix the cornstarch straight into the sauce, though. Instead, stir it with a little bit of water until it dissolves completely. This will make a slurry that you can easily whisk into the sauce. Using cornstarch rather than flour won’t drastically affect the taste, and it makes sure that the sauce doesn’t cloud up either.
When adding cornstarch to your sauce, you want to warm the sauce on high heat and whisk continuously. This will allow the cornstarch to work into your sauce and thicken as it incorporates. Once the sauce has thickened completely, you can take it off the heat and stop whisking. It may continue to thicken after you remove it from the heat.
How to Make Creamy Lemon Butter Sauce
A creamy lemon butter sauce can be a little more versatile, and it’s a great addition to pasta, seafood, and veggies, but it also works well on chicken, pork, and a variety of other foods. You can also incorporate it into soups and use it as a dipping sauce for bread. If you make it thick enough, it can even be used as pizza sauce.
To make a lemon butter sauce creamy, you can add heavy cream to it. The addition of the heavy cream thickens the sauce and makes it richer and more flavorful. Let me share with you a recipe for how to make this kind of creamy lemon butter sauce.
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup of heavy cream
- 1 lemon
- 6 tablespoons of butter
- 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
- 1 cup of chicken broth
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions:
- Heat 4 tablespoons butter and minced garlic over medium heat in a skillet on the stovetop.
- Cook for about two to three minutes and then add in your lemon juice.
- Cook for an additional two to three minutes and then add chicken broth and stir thoroughly.
- Lower the heat and continue cooking for two to three minutes and then add in remaining butter. Take off the heat and season with salt and pepper.
- Stir in the heavy cream slowly and mix completely.
So, there you have a couple variations on the lemon butter sauce that you can make. Each of these have different uses, and once you play around with the recipes a little bit, you can find modifications that work well for you. If you’ve changed up these recipes at all and like how they turn down, please be sure to share that with us in the comments below.
I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!
