Brown butter crêpes with honey and fleur de sel
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Some rituals don't have a name.
This one happens every Sunday morning in our kitchen. The butter goes in the pan before I am fully awake — the smell does the rest. By the time the children come downstairs, the kitchen smells like France, like childhood, like a version of home that exists somewhere between continents.
I learned this crêpe recipe during the years I lived in France. I have been making it for over twenty years. It has changed very little. The brown butter is non-negotiable. The honey must be good honey. The fleur de sel at the end is not a flourish — it is the thing that makes the whole crêpe make sense.
This is the recipe I want my children to be able to make when I am not there to make it for them.
Ingredients
Serves 4 — makes approximately 10 to 12 crêpes
2 cups whole milk, room temperature
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, browned until golden and nutty
Pinch of salt, pinch of sugar
To serve: raw honey, fleur de sel, fresh lemon
Method
Brown the butter first. Put it in a small pan over medium heat and watch it. It will foam, then the foam will subside, and the milk solids at the bottom will turn golden and then amber and then the colour of hazelnuts. When it smells like toasted nuts, pull it off the heat. Let it cool while you make the batter.
Make the batter. Whisk the milk, eggs, flour, salt, and sugar together until completely smooth. A blender takes thirty seconds and produces a more consistent result. Stir in the browned butter.
Rest — this is not optional. Let the batter sit for at least thirty minutes. The gluten relaxes. The crêpes become silk. Thirty minutes. The batter relaxes. So do you.
Cook. Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat. No oil — the batter has enough butter. Pour a thin layer, swirl immediately to coat the pan in a thin even circle, and cook for sixty to ninety seconds until the edges begin to lift and the surface looks dry. Flip. Cook thirty seconds on the other side.
Serve. Warm, immediately, with a generous drizzle of honey, a small pinch of fleur de sel, a squeeze of lemon. Lay them flat. Eat them with a fork and the unhurried feeling of a Sunday morning that has nowhere to be.
The brown butter is everything. And the rest time is not optional.
✦ The pan I make these in, every Sunday — [add affiliate link]. If you buy through this link, Maison Lumiel earns a small commission. Always my honest picks. ✦ The honey we use — [add affiliate link] ✦ Fleur de sel de Guérande — [add affiliate link]
— M.