Use clarified butter with popcorn, crab legs, lobster, sautéeing veggies—once you try it you’ll never go back!
- Ingredients
- 1 lb. unsalted butter
- Tools
- Large glass container, like a quart Mason jar
- Cheesecloth
- Rubber bands
- Fine mesh strainer
- Probe thermometer
We all love butter; it’s delicious and one of most useful ingredients in the kitchen. You have to be careful not to burn it, though: The smoke point of butter is only 300° F.
That’s because butter contains milk fat (aka butterfat), water, protein, and milk solids (mostly the sugar lactose). Lactose is what burns if you overheat your butter.
Enter clarified butter: Remove the milk solids and water from butter, and its smoke point jumps up to 450° F.
Take it a step further and make ghee, and the smoke point climbs to 482° F.
What’s ghee? Ghee is clarified butter cooked a bit longer than clarified butter.
Why bother with either one? Because clarified butter/ghee can be used in place of other high-temperature oils, and the results will blow you away! Try using butter for:
- Making popcorn
- Dipping crab legs or lobster
- Sauteeing at temperatures that normally require canola or peanut oil
- Sauces
- Frying hash browns or breakfast spuds
- Roasting spuds or vegetables, or use in place of butter with steamed veggies
- Use in place of butter for people mildly sensitive to lactose
Once you try it you’ll never go back!
Clarified Butter
Put the butter in the glass container. Cover the mouth of the container with cheesecloth and use rubber bands to hold it in place; when it’s starting to boil, butter generate big messy bubbles that splatter water and oil all over the place.
Place the glass container in a skillet over medium heat. This is safer than putting the container on the burner, especially if you have a gas stovetop— you won’t have to worry about burning the cheesecloth or liquid butter dripping on the burner.
Once the butter is liquefied, decrease the heat to the lowest setting, then adjust to maintain a low boil. The protein and casein will foam on top; you can skim it off with a strainer or filter it out later.
In 30 to 45 minutes, the bubbling will slow to a stop as the water evaporates. Remove the cheesecloth and get your thermometer in the butterfat; with the water gone the temperature will rise in a hurry.
Turn off the heat as the temperature reaches 260° F. The foam on top will start to brown and the butterfat will be a clear golden color.
Line a mesh strainer with four layers of cheesecloth and place it over a heatproof container. Slowly pour the clarified butter through the cheesecloth. The cheesecloth will filter out the foam on top, but keep as much of milk solids in original container as possible; they can sneak through the cheesecloth.
Cool down, put into an airtight container and stash it in the fridge.
Congratulations! You just made clarified butter.
You can store it in the fridge up to six months or freeze it up to a year.
Ghee
To make ghee, just keep going when the temperature hits 260° F. Keep the clarified butter gently simmering until the milk solids on the bottom turn brown; the butterfat’s color with shift from golden to a lighter brown, and the ghee will emit a rich, nutty smell.
If you’re not sure whether it’s done, or you’re nervous about burning it, buy a jar of ghee at the grocery store and use it as a reference for ghee’s color and fragrance.
At that point, follow the clarified butter recipe: Remove from heat and strain through cheesecloth, then store in the fridge in an airtight container.