These sea salt chocolate chip cookies are thick and chewy and have an absolutely DIVINE flavor thanks to brown butter and sea salt on the inside and outside of the cookie. Sea salt intensifies and brings out the natural chocolate flavor and takes those chocolate chip cookies from good to gourmet! If you love my master chocolate chip cookie recipe, you will love these!
Table Of Contents
Ingredients
You won't need any special ingredients for this gourmet chocolate chip cookies but you will notice that I like to brown my butter before making these cookies. Browning your butter adds SO MUCH flavor to the cookie. If you don't want to bother with browning, you don't have to! These cookies will still taste amazing!
How To Brown Butter
The first thing you want to do is brown your butter. You can do this days in advance if you want to, just keep the brown butter at room temperature after you make it so it's soft when you want to use it.
- Place your butter into a medium-sized saucepan and melt it over medium-high heat, whisking constantly.
- Your butter will begin to foam up as you whisk and that is normal.
- Continue whisking until you begin to see the butter go from golden brown to a deep brown and emits a warm nutty aroma. You may have to remove the saucepan off the heat to push the foam to the side and see the butter.
- Pour the brown butter into another dish to cool down before you use it.
How To Make Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Preheat your oven to 375ºF and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- Place your cooled brown butter, white sugar and brown sugar into the bowl of your stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Cream until light and fluffy (3-5 minutes on medium speed). You can also just do this by hand or use a hand mixer.
- While mixing on low, add one egg, let it mix in fully before adding the next. Then add the vanilla and whisk to combine.
- Remove the bowl from the stand mixer. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and fold with a spatula until just combined. Do not over-mix.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Cover your dough and chill for a minimum of 30 minutes or up to 24 hours.
- Use a small cookie scoop (roughly 2 Tablespoons) to portion out your cookies onto your prepared sheet pan.
- Add a few chocolate chip cookies on top of the dough balls so that when they bake, they look even more beautiful!
- Bake your cookies for 11-12 minutes until they begin to brown around the edges. Don't over-bake your cookies! Under-baked is better than over-baked for a soft and chewy cookie.
- Immediate sprinkle more flaky sea salt on top of your cookies.
- Let your cookies cool on the cookie sheet for about five minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack to cool fully (if you can wait that long to eat them!)
Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies FAQ
Once the chocolate chip cookies are done baking, immediately sprinkle the flaky sea salt on top so that it sticks to the cookies. I also like to use a fine sea salt inside the cookie while baking.
Sea salt intensifies the flavor of your baked goods, especially chocolate! The contrast between sweet and salty is absolutely divine!
You can use salted butter instead of unsalted but the amount of salt in a stick of butter is a lot more than what you would typically add to a baking recipe. Bakers usually use unsalted butter so that they can control the amount of salt in their recipes. If you do use salted butter, omit the added salt so that your cookies do not become overly salted.
Other Recipes You Will Love
Master Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Recipe
Ingredients
- 6 ounces unsalted butter
- 7 ounces brown sugar
- 2 ounces white sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 ½ Tablespoons vanilla extract
- 8 ounces all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 16 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes for sprinkling on top of cookies
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 375ºF. line a pan with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set it aside.
- Place your butter into a medium-size saucepan and bring it to a simmer over medium-high heat, whisking constantly.
- Continue whisking the butter until it begins to turn a golden brown color and releases a nutty aroma. Do not walk away from the butter or it can get burned. Set it aside to cool until it no longer feels warm. You can put it in the fridge in a shallow pan to speed up the process.
- Once your butter has cooled, place it into the bowl of your stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Add the white and brown sugar and cream until light and fluffy (3-4 minutes on medium speed)
- While mixing on low, add in your eggs, letting the first one mix in fully before adding in the second one.
- Then add in the vanilla and whisk to combine.
- Remove the bowl from the stand mixer. Add in your flour, baking soda, and the first quantity of salt and hand mix with a spatula until just combined.
- Fold in your chocolate chips with a spatula. Do not over-mix your dough.
- Cover your dough with plastic wrap and place it into the fridge to rest for a minimum of 30 minutes or up to 24 hours.
- Use a small cookie scoop (roughly two Tablespoons) to scoop your dough and place them onto your cookie sheet about 2" apart.
- Add a few chocolate chips on top of the balls if you want to make them look extra pretty after baking
- Bake your cookies for 11-12 minutes or just until they start to get golden brown around the edges. It's better to under-bake then to over-bake. This makes the cookies extra soft and chewy.
- Immediately after your remove the cookies from the oven, sprinkle some more sea salt on top of the cookies.
- Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet before carefully transferring them to a cooling rack (if you can stop yourself from eating them!)
