Crispy Buttermilk Waffles with Brown Butter
Crisp outside, tender within, from browned butter and whipped egg whites folded in at the last minute.
- Serves
- 4
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Written
Method
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Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, swirling often, until it foams and then turns golden brown and smells nutty. Pour into a bowl to stop the cooking.
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Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.
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Whisk the egg yolks, buttermilk, vanilla, and browned butter into the dry ingredients until just combined; a few lumps are fine.
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In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they hold soft peaks, then fold into the batter in two additions.
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Preheat the waffle iron and coat lightly with cooking spray. Pour in batter and cook until deeply golden and crisp, about 4 minutes.
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Transfer waffles straight to a wire rack, not a plate, so steam escapes and the bottoms stay crisp. Repeat with the remaining batter.
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Serve immediately with maple syrup and butter.
Notes
Two things push this past a standard waffle: the butter goes brown before it goes in, for a nutty depth pancake batter never gets, and the whites get whipped and folded in separately instead of dumped in whole. That second step is the one people skip and shouldn’t — it’s what gives the inside its lift instead of density, and the outside its shatter instead of chew.
They freeze well past the point of being worth doing. Cool the extras completely on the rack, freeze them in a single layer, then bag them once solid — a couple of minutes in the toaster on the way to frozen-solid gets them back to crisp with none of the sogginess of the microwave.