This rich, flavorful lemon butter sauce is delicious on pasta, roasted veggies, and more. Made with 5 ingredients, it comes together in minutes.
Earlier this spring, I started making this lemon butter sauce to serve with steamed artichokes. Since then, I’ve started serving it with so much more – pasta, roasted veggies, couscous. It’s deliciously buttery and rich, with a bright, savory flavor from lemon juice and garlic. You only need 5 ingredients to make it, and it comes together in less than 5 minutes. I mean, why not drizzle it over everything?
Lemon Butter Sauce Recipe Ingredients
You only need 5 ingredients to make this recipe:
- Butter, of course! I recommend using unsalted butter here. That way, you have complete control over the seasoning. If you use salted butter, or if you make this recipe with vegan butter, omit the salt and season to taste.
- Fresh lemon juice – Its bright flavor cuts the butter’s richness.
- Garlic – For savory depth of flavor.
- And salt and pepper – To make all the flavors pop.
Find the complete recipe with measurements below.
How to Use Lemon Butter Sauce
Once you have this lemon butter sauce recipe in your back pocket, have fun experimenting with different ways to use it. It’s amazingly versatile, and I think you’ll find that it tastes great on all sorts of dishes. Here are a few serving suggestions to get you started:
- Toss it with pasta. I call for this lemon garlic butter sauce specifically in my artichoke pasta recipe, but don’t feel like you need a recipe to use it. Make a quick weeknight dinner by tossing it with any pasta shape, sautéed greens, and Parmesan cheese, or use it to dress up your next batch of homemade pasta.
- Mix it with couscous or rice to make an easy side dish for any protein you like.
- Serve it as a dipping sauce. I especially like it with steamed artichoke leaves or roasted baby artichokes.
- Drizzle it over simply cooked veggies. You’ll love it on green beans, roasted asparagus, roasted radishes, and cauliflower.
How do you like to serve this lemon sauce? Let me know in the comments!
More Favorite Sauce Recipes
If you love this recipe, try one of these easy sauces next:
Lemon Butter Sauce
Ingredients
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
- 1 garlic clove, grated
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Parsley, for garnish
- Pinch red pepper flakes, optional
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Add the garlic and salt and cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice. Season with freshly ground pepper and sprinkle with parsley and red pepper flakes, if using.
- Serve with steamed artichokes for dipping or toss with pasta. See the blog post above for additional serving suggestions.
Your lemon butter sauce is great on breaded fish fillets and cheesy grits!
I made this and enhanced it with a little better than bouillon chicken base and it was awesome!
I’m so glad you loved the sauce!
Hi there. I’m going to follow your recipe for blanching my green beans and I’m going to use your recipe for the lemon butter sauce. This dish will be made ahead of time and served with my Christmas dinner. Can you please explain how to warm up the green beans and lemon sauce. In a low and slow oven? What temp and time?
Hi Liz, If you’re able to, I would make the lemon butter sauce on the day you plan to serve it, as it’s so quick to put together. If you have a microwave, that would be an easy way to reheat the beans without them losing too much moisture. Drizzle the sauce over the beans just before serving. Hope this helps!
This was so good and perfect for our fish dinner, poured it over blanched French beans and steamed butternut squash.
I’m so glad you loved it!
I tried a new recipe calling for fettuccine, shrimp, chopped asparagus, red sweet pepper, peas, minced garlic, lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, salt, pepper, grated Parmesan, chopped flat-leaf parsley. Great ingredients, but the result was dry. I thought a lemon butter sauce might rescue it, looked on line and voila! This one saved the day. Definitely a keeper.
I’m so glad it saved the recipe!
Oh my gosh!!! I combined your recipe for a lemon vinaigrette with this one. AMAZING. 1:1 lemon juice to oil. Half butter, half evoo. Add lemon zest, 2 cloves garlic, thyme parsley pepper, tiny hint of honey. Tossed with gf pasta and halved grape tomatoes. It tastes like something I would find in Tuscany! I’ve been down with covid for weeks and this was by far the best thing I can remember eating all month. It’s so fresh!
Oh yum, that sounds so delicious! I’m so glad you enjoyed it so much!
How much sauce sauce does this make??? How much pasta would be appropriate for this amount of pasta??
Hi Margaret, about 8 ounces of pasta if you’re adding other veggies or proteins to your pasta (see this recipe for artichoke pasta): https://dailycove.info/artichoke-pasta-recipe/%3C/a%3E%29%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EIf you’re not adding anything to the pasta, you could do closer to 12 ounces of pasta.
Hope that helps!
I made this recipe today. I used 8 oz of pasta and it was just the right amount.
I want to use it as my lemon sauce for Chinese fried lemon chicken , hopefully it will be a success
Excellent recipe. I did a small twist. I used lemon zest and “extracted” oils to butter. I let it cool down. Once more to the stove and took the zest away and added the rest of the ingredients, including one spoon of fresh lemon juice. It was so delicious with spaghetti.
Yes!!!! I did something similar and it was phenomenal! Thanks for the idea.
How much pasta can you toss with the recipe to have enough sauce so the taste is there.
Hi Jay, we do 8 ounces (plus artichokes), in this recipe: https://dailycove.info/artichoke-pasta-recipe/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv class=reply>
Delicious and simple great on pasta with scallops
Served with parmesan crusted chicken breast it is fabulous..
Loved it!!!!! Put it over shell pasta. doubled the butter and added 3 more garlic cloves.. added shrimp… It was a winner…
I’m so glad you loved it!
I bought lobster ravioli at Costco and forgot to get jar sauce. This was perfect, I already had all the ingredients, so no last minute run to the store and it was delicious. Thanks!
I’m so glad you loved the sauce!
I found 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to be way to much. I had to add another stick of butter and it is still strong.
Yum! Made this sauce and served it with a chicken mignon, steamed cabbage and sweet potato mash. Delish!
Great simple delicious recipe!
Maybe add the note that the garlic might turn blue because of the acidity from the lemon. Just looked that up cause all my garlic had a blue hue!
Delicious- I poached cod in the sauce and I was perfect.
Simple but a winner to prepare and taste
I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
I’m thinking over baked fish