My father-in-law introduced us to this restaurant called The Well. We go there for the wings, which we order naked with the sauces on the side. This lets us order a nice sampling of the sauces to dip the crispy naked wings in, instead of arguing about which sauces to have them tossed in. The first time we went I tried several flavors but every time since, I’ve pretty much eaten their Garlic Parmesan sauce exclusively.
Because of how much I like this sauce, I just had to try to make my own version for chicken strip and homemade fry night on New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t find any copycat recipes that seemed close online, most everything I found used mayo. The sauce at The Well is definitely based on clarified butter. So I was on my own. The sauce came out pretty close but you do have to serve it immediately, or re-heat it very gently so the parmesan doesn’t melt and clump. We may need to consider adding naked chicken wings to our New Year’s feast… or maybe start a wing night.
Here’s what you need:
This is a garlic butter sauce so first things first, you need to be prepared to use an obscene amount of butter – as in an entire pound.
Cut the butter into chunks and add to a saucepan. To the butter add 3 cloves of smashed garlic and then grate in 1 large (or 2 regular) cloves of garlic. We’re going to pull out the smashed garlic later after it imparts its flavor but the grated garlic will stay and reinforce the garlic flavor. You could also substitute 1 t of garlic powder.
Gently melt the butter on low heat. We want to give it time to infuse the garlic flavor.
As the butter cooks the milk solids will separate and rise to the top as foam. We’re going to skim that off. At the same time we’ll pull out the smashed garlic.
This will leave us with clarified butter.
Pour the butter into a bowl and add in about ¾ cup of grated parmesan – yes I used the kind in the green can not fresh stuff.
Stir some chopped parsley at this point too – I forgot to take a picture. Feel free to taste and add more parmesan as needed.
Serve immediately or reheat gently.
- 1 lb (4 sticks) butter, cut into chunks
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 large clove (or 2 regular cloves) garlic, grated
- ¾ c grated parmesan
- 1 ½ t diced parsley
- Add the butter and garlic into a saucepan and melt gently over medium-low to low heat.
- Skim off the foam with a spoon.
- Pour into a bowl. Stir in parmesan and parsley.
- Serve immediately.
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