Use These 3 Ingredients For Rich, Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies At Home

Having a great, go-to recipe for chocolate chip cookies is like having a winning lottery ticket in your pocket at all times. So what makes it so valuable? It's simple: the ingredients. A cookie is only as good as the ingredients that make it, and that means your butter, chocolate, and salt must all be top of the line. If they aren't, you'll be able to taste it.

When it comes to quality, European style butter trumps run-of-the-mill grocery store butter every time. Unlike American butter that requires a minimum of 80% butterfat, according to the USDA, European regulations require a minimum of 82% butterfat. That higher percentage means a richer, more buttery flavor. It also helps give cookies that crisp, crinkly exterior and soft, chewy interior. Considering we're talking chocolate chip cookies, however, ensuring that the ingredient in the name is top notch is also a bit of a no-brainer. The chocolate is there to deliver an intense punch of deep, rich, and slightly bitter cocoa flavor against that sweet, buttery cookie base. To achieve this, go for a semi-sweet chocolate with 60% to 70% cacao. If you're shooting for textural consistency, opt for a bag of chocolate chips. For a more interesting texture in each bite, get your chocolate in bar form, and chop it into chunks. 

No chocolate chip cookie is complete without a sprinkle of salt as soon as they come out of the oven. For this, flaky sea salt is key. That hint of briny flavor will help to balance and enhance the chocolate flavor. Flakes will also make your cookies visually stunning, while giving a delicate crunch to each bite.

Using the best quality butter, chocolate, and salt in your chocolate chip cookies is crucial, but to really push the envelope, we recommend taking things one step further. For the chocolate and the salt, it's fairly self-explanatory how to best deploy them into your cookie dough. For the butter, however, there's one way to extract even more flavor out of it, resulting in a seriously life-altering chocolate chip cookie. Rather than just creaming softened butter with brown sugar and eggs, brown the butter instead. This process will reduce moisture for chewier cookies and deliver a nutty, caramelized flavor to your dough, giving the final product that rich, buttery, bakery-style flavor that you're going for.

Browning butter is simple, but requires your undivided attention. Start the butter (European style, of course) in a small saute pan or sauce pot on low heat, and keep it moving. Let the butter slowly melt and simmer for the next five minutes or so, and watch it closely. Swirl the butter in the pan, and wait for it to start foaming up. Once it stops sizzling, remove it from the heat — the color should be light brown and should smell kind of sweet and toasty like roasted nuts. That caramelized, nutty flavor will penetrate into each cookie as it bakes, resulting in the best batch of brown butter chocolate chip cookies you've ever made. Jackpot!