A basic homemade lemon butter sauce comes together in minutes with only a few ingredients. And it’s ever so good. You will find yourself looking for ways to use this at least once a week, and those options won’t be hard to find at all. This simple recipe will teach you how to make lemon butter sauce for fish, and it can also elevate other dishes, from seafood to vegetables to chicken!

You can’t go wrong with this recipe if you use good butter and fresh lemon. Try lemon butter sauce drizzled over Baked Salmon, Roasted Asparagus, or Grilled Lobster Tail. See below for more suggestions, but think of it whenever you want to quickly boost a dish up a notch.

Lemon Butter Sauce Recipe: This simple silky, 5-minute sauce elevates everything, from fish and seafood to vegetables to chicken!

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Lemon Butter Sauce Ingredients

• Butter – Use unsalted butter so you can control the amount of salt yourself. Use the best butter you can buy! European butters, and some other cultured butters (domestic or imported), have a higher butterfat content, which will result in a richer, deeper, more buttery-tasting sauce.
• Lemon juice – As one of the two main ingredients, please make sure to use fresh lemon juice, which makes all the difference in this recipe. The bottled stuff just doesn’t taste as fresh, and the whole point of this sauce is to add a buttery, tart freshness to whatever you are serving it with.
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste – I like to be fairly generous with the salt and pepper in this recipe, as the seasonings really perk up the simple combo of ingredients. Kosher salt makes it easier to control the level of saltiness.
• Minced shallots – Make sure to finely mince the shallots for this sauce. You can substitute onion in place of the shallots if that’s what you have on hand. Scallions and garlic are other options from the allium (onion) family. You can add those instead of or in addition to the shallots.

How to Make Lemon Butter Sauce

1. Melt the butter with the shallot: Combine the ingredients in a small sauce pot over medium heat and gently simmer for about 2 to 3 minutes, until the shallot starts to turn light golden brown.

2. Simmer: Keep at a gentle simmer until the color of the melted butter deepens to a nice golden brown.

3. Finish the sauce and season to taste: Turn off the heat and immediately whisk in the lemon juice, salt, and pepper, along with the parsley and red pepper flakes, if using.

4. Serve: Drizzle the warm butter sauce over whatever you are serving it with.

Tips

• Keep an eye on the butter as it starts to brown. It can go from golden to brown to over-browned very quickly. Remove it from the heat the minute it starts to smell nutty and get to the color you are looking for. The butter will continue to cook and brown slightly even once you’ve removed it from the heat, so err on the lighter side, and you can always return it to the heat for another minute or two.
• Whisk or stir the butter and shallots frequently.
• Make sure to strain the lemon juice through a fine mesh strainer to remove any pits or pit fragments, which will give you a smoother, silkier sauce.
• Add the lemon juice off the heat. This will keep the fresh flavor of the lemon at its brightest. It is ok, however, to reheat the sauce with the lemon juice and herbs in it if the sauce starts to cool and thicken.
• Add the lemon juice as soon as the butter reaches the desired level of golden brown-ness. This will stop the browning of the butter.
• You can rewarm the lemon butter on the stove. It will start to congeal as it sits. Just 30 seconds over low heat will return the lemon butter to its liquid state, perfect for drizzling.

How to Use Lemon Butter Sauce

This is the most versatile sauce! As well as the simplest. 

• Drizzle it over fish. The sauce is especially good with poached, baked, or grilled salmon and trout, but you won’t go wrong pairing it with any kind of fish, from cod to halibut to snapper to sole. Try this Salmon with Lemon Butter Sauce recipe.
• Serve with chicken. It’s great over simply cooked poached, seared, or grilled chicken breasts.
• Toss it with pasta. This works with any shape of pasta. I think I like it best with long, thin pasta for a main course, and somehow, I like to pair it with a shorter, chunkier shape for a side dish. That is my own weird algorithm, though, so please decide for yourself! Adding a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese is a great enhancement.
• Add to rice. You can also stir this sauce into rice and other grains for a simple side dish.
• Toss it with cooked greens. I love this sauce with braised collards with bacon or mustard greens, or simply sautéed spinach or kale. I really love it with cooked greens mixed with hot pasta!
• Use it as a dipping sauce. My mom always served a version of this sauce with steamed artichokes, and we would dip those leaves into the sauce and scoop up all of the lemony, buttery fabulousness. It’s also perfect with grilled artichokes.
• Drizzle it over simply prepared vegetables. Asparagus and lemon butter sauce are particularly good partners whether the asparagus is grilled, steamed, roasted, and so on. I also love it with roasted peppers, grilled zucchini and summer squash, and roasted broccoli.

Variations

This is a very simple lemon butter sauce recipe. It’s delightful, and if you decide to add the parsley and red pepper flakes, you will have a more visually interesting sauce with a nice herby and/or spicy pop of flavor. You can also add another dimension of flavor with other ingredients:

• Add a few tablespoons of heavy cream for a creamier version of lemon butter sauce.
• Add 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard once the butter has melted.
• Add 1 tablespoon minced, rinsed, and drained capers once the butter has melted.
• Add 1 to 2 tablespoons minced black or green olives, black or green once the butter has melted.
• Instead of or with the parsley, add 1 to 2 teaspoons of minced fresh herbs, such as tarragon, thyme, basil, or chives.
• Use 1 to 3 tablespoons of minced scallions (white and green parts) along with or instead of the shallots.
• Add 1/2 to 1 teaspoon finely minced garlic with or instead of the shallots.
• Add 2 to 3 tablespoons dry white wine to the melted butter.
• If you want a slightly thicker sauce, you can add 1 to 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour to the melted butter and shallots. Just stir or whisk frequently until the flour is completely incorporated into the butter and starts to turn a golden brown along with the melted butter.

What to Serve With Lemon Butter Sauce

Grilled Scallops

How to Poach Salmon

How to Steam Asparagus

More Homemade Sauce Recipes

• Remoulade Sauce
• Bolognese Sauce
• Chimichurri Sauce
• Dill Sauce
• Creamy Cilantro Sauce