This post may contain affiliate links. See my privacy policy for details.
A quick and easy garlic butter sauce you can use for pretty much anything! Put it on pasta or coat your shrimp or lobster with it, or just eat it with a spoon; the choice is yours!
Garlic Butter Sauce
Garlic and butter are one of life’s perfect pairings. The sharp, potent and pure greatness of garlic just works so well when paired with fatty, salty, and delicious butter.
This sauce does the very logical thing and combines both garlic and butter into a luscious, creamy, and versatile sauce. The addition of some parsley and lemon juice to provide some herbaceousness and acidity makes it even better and allows it to be worked into basically any recipe and used on every ingredient you can imagine.
Garlic Butter Sauce Ingredients
Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts so that you know exactly what to buy for this recipe.
ā¢ Salted butter
ā¢ Minced garlic
ā¢ Chopped parsley
ā¢ Lemon juice (or white wine)
How To Make Garlic Butter Sauce
ā¢ Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat on the stove, and then turn down to low heat
ā¢ Stir in the minced garlic and continue cooking for 3 minutes, or until the garlic begins to turn fragrant
ā¢ Add the lemon juice or white wine to taste
ā¢ Stir in the parsley, remove from the heat and then serve with shrimp or as a sauce for another meal
How To Avoid Accidentally Burning Your Garlic
The trickiest part of cooking garlic is trying to avoid accidentally burning it. This is especially disastrous when garlic is the central flavor of the whole recipe.
It is surprisingly easy to burn the garlic, especially when they get cut very fine, and they can go from golden and delicious to burnt and crisp in a moment.
To stop yourself from burning your garlic, you can do two things: you can cut your garlic into larger pieces, or you can cook it at a really low temperature.
Garlicās propensity to burn is directly tied to how fine you cut it, so you donāt mind larger garlic pieces in your final garlic butter sauce; just cut your garlic into larger pieces.
If you still want fine little pieces of garlic in your sauce, you will need to babysit your garlic as it cooks. Keep the heat on really low and stir it frequently, making sure to stir and turn the pieces of garlic as they cook.
As long as you are careful, it isnāt too hard to avoid burning your garlic and ruining your recipe.
Should You Use Lemon Juice Or White Wine?
This recipe calls for either lemon juice or white wine, so which should you choose?
Fundamentally, both of them provide the same function in the recipe ā they help thin it out and provide some flavorful liquid while also contributing some acidity to help balance out the fat within the butter.
If you use lemon juice, you can expect your garlic butter sauce to obviously taste more ālemon-y,ā but it will also be a bit sharper and more acidic.
If you use white wine, however, you can expect more of a gentle acidity, as well as whatever flavors are in the wine itself should carry into the sauce.
If you have some white wine on hand, then definitely pick it over some lemon juice, but donāt feel like you absolutely have to have it to make this recipe.
If you do use white wine for this recipe, though, make sure that you take into account the additional liquid that you will be adding compared to using lemon juice. You might want to cook the white in the sauce for a little bit longer than you would if you used lemon juice to help cook out some of the extra liquid.
Looking for more delicious Sauce recipes? Try these out:
ā¢ Baba Ganoush Recipe (Roasted Eggplant / Aubergine Dip)
Happy Cooking
Love,
Karlynn
PIN THIS RECIPE to your SAUCES Board and Remember to FOLLOW ME ON PINTEREST!
Garlic Butter Sauce
- Prep Time
- 2 minutes
- Cook Time
- 5 minutes
- Course
- Sauces
- Cuisine
- American
- Servings
- 4
- Calories
- 845
- Author
- Karlynn Johnston
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup salted butter
- 1 1/2 tbsp minced garlic
- 1 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
- 1 tbsp lemon juice or white wine
Instructions
- Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat on the stove, then turn down to low heat.
- Stir in minced garlic and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes or until the garlic begins to smell fragrant.
- Add lemon juice or white wine to taste.
- Stir in the parsley.
- Remove from the heat and serve with shrimp or as a sauce for another meal.
Nutrition Information
All calories and info are based on a third party calculator and are only an estimate. Actual nutritional info will vary with brands used, your measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
Made this recipe?
Share a photo of what you made on Instagram or Facebook and tag me @thekitchenmagpie or hashtag it #thekitchenmagpie.
Please rate this recipe in the comments below to help out your fellow cooks!
Learn to cook like the Kitchen Magpie
A Very Prairie Christmas Bakebook
Vintage Baking to Celebrate the Festive Season!
Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky
A Modern Bakerās Guide to Old-Fashioned Desserts
The Prairie Table
Suppers, Potlucks & Socials: Crowd-Pleasing Recipes to Bring People Together
Leave a Comment or Recipe Tip