Clarifying Butter
Being able to clarify butter is a very useful skill. It’s also very easy, and requires only a bit of patience.
Whole butter, straight off the shelf, is not good for sautéing, because it has a very low smoke point. If you heat butter too high, it will burn, because of all the milk solids it contains. By clarifying butter, you remove the milk solids and foam, which raises the smoke point greatly. This makes clarified butter great for sautéing. However, some (but not all) of the butter flavor is lost in the clarifying, so clarified butter is not as good to finish a dish or sauce with as regular whole butter.
To clarify butter:
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Once melted, keep it on moderate heat, and the butter will gradually break apart into three layers: a top layer of foam, a middle layer of butterfat, and a bottom layer of milk solids. The middle layer is what you want. Remove the top foam layer by skimming it with a spoon or ladle. Continue skimming until the bubbles stop foaming and the surface appears clear. By then, the milk solids will have all settled to the bottom – don’t disturb them. Ladle out the butterfat into a separate container, and leave the bottom layer of solids.
As you get to the bottom, it’s hard to get all the clarified butter out without getting some of the solids. If you wish to get every drop of usable butter, you can strain the whole thing through cheesecloth. By carefully ladling it out though, and leaving the last little bit, you don’t need the cheesecloth.
A pound of whole butter (4 sticks) will yield about 12 ounces of clarified butter – the other 4 ounces are the foam and milk solids that you discard. Keep this in mind if you need a large amount of butter, for example to make a roux – start with more butter than the recipe calls for.
