Making dulce de leche using sous vide is about as mindlessly simple a process as you can hope.  You can cook the sweetened condensed milk in the can if you’d like—many do—but I pour the can into a jar I have sized just for this (and that same jar then stores it in the refrigerator).

Other folks cook theirs for 12 hours but I push mine to 15 hours for a more golden flavor.  Set the cooker to 185f and drop in your can or jar.

This got me to thinking:  “Can I make browned butter the same way?”

Today I am trying a cube of butter as 185f for 12 hours and we’ll see what that does.  On-line I saw many folks claiming you can’t do it because the water will prevent the browning.  I am rightly dubious about this claim.  Sweetened condensed milk is about 27% water while butter is only about 16-18% water.  If I can caramelize the sugars in sweetened condensed milk with nearly twice the water, I ought to be able to do similar in butter.

We shall see.