When Should Butter Be Clarified?
Clarified butter is more than the slick stuff in that ramekin nestled between the claws of your lobster at dinner. It’s a versatile ingredient that’s already in your refrigerator, if you know how to get your, er, claws on it.
Here’s everything you need to know:
What It Is: Pure butter fat, essentially free of milk solids and water.
How to Make It: The opaque, rich liquid is the result of melting butter over medium-low heat and straining it through cheesecloth. In the video above, Saveur’s Cory Baldwin shows us how it’s done.
What It Tastes Like: Imagine a richer, creamier version of butter. (Bet you didn’t think that was possible!)
Why Cooks Love It: Clarified butter can be heated to higher temperatures than the “regular” stuff without burning, which means it’s great for searing, frying, and sautéing.
How to Use It: Sure, you can dunk some sweet lobster meat into it. But clarified butter can also be employed to fry up a tender veal chop, lend even more decadence to baklava, or seal a chicken liver pâté. One can even use it as a substitute for duck fat.
Other Varieties: Ghee, which is popular in Indian cuisine, is similar to clarified butter but cooked even longer to remove all moisture. The milk solids, which are filtered out via a strainer, turn a gorgeous shade of caramel and give the remaining liquid a velvety texture and rich, nutty flavor. Use ghee in dishes such spiced butter chicken or yellow lentil soup.
So go ahead, live butter. (Yeah, we went there.)
