Forget about normal butter. Clarified butter is not only more and more popular but is also much healthier and comes with a whole lot more of shelf life.
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But what exactly is clarified butter and where can you buy? And how come it’s healthier?
Clarified butter is butter from which milk solids are removed by allowing them to separate from the butterfat at a slow melting pace. During the melting process, any water is also evaporated, the result becoming a type of ‘clean butter’ with purer and milder flavor and the advantage of a higher smoke point.
So whereas normal butter tends to burn and spoil upon reaching a higher temperature, clarified butter won’t. You can use it to cook at temperatures above use of regular butter.
Clarified butter – Butter worth making
Although you can find clarified butter at health food stores throughout the country and across online shopping platforms such as Amazon and Walmart, you can also make your own. Clarifying butter is very easy, and it only takes 1 ingredient: butter, of course.
Make sure you are using unsalted butter when clarifying.
Clarifying salted butter will make for a very pronounced salty flavor because of the evaporation process. When the butter is reduced to nearly 100 percent fat, the flavor becomes more nuanced, which is what we are looking for, but not with salted butter.
Make as much clarified butter as you wish. Because it has a longer shelf life, you can make as much of it as you’d like, also considering that you can cook a lot more with it since it has a higher smoke point compared to regular butter.
Regular butter burns at 350° Fahrenheit while clarified butter comes with 450° F smoke point.
Note: It is, in fact, recommended if using this procedure to clarify larger quantities of butter. If only clarifying a pound or less, clarify the butter ghee-style or Indian style. This is recommended because, with lesser quantities, the following recipe may result in losing a lot of the butterfat with all the skimming and ladling.
This is how you clarify butter:
- Place butter cut in cubes in a saucepan over medium to low heat. During the melting process, water will sink to the bottom of the pan, and the milk proteins will rise to the top in the form of white foam. This is where step 2 emerges.
- Remove the white foam surfacing on the top. You will notice once the foam is skimmed that the milk proteins are on the bottom of the pan and that the rest is golden liquid. Now is the time for step 3.
- Pick up the saucepan gently and pour the liquid, which is the butter now clarified into a sealed container and keep refrigerated.
Clarified butter is good to use for at least 6 months if stored properly. If you’re asking yourself why use clarified instead of regular butter and the higher smoke point isn’t enough to convince you, here is another reason: clarified butter is richer in vitamins, specifically A, D and E.