What Is Clarified Butter And How Is It Made?

If you've ever made hollandaise sauce, you know that clarified butter is magical. Also called liquid gold, it is an ingredient humans have been preparing and using for millennia. That said, it's a less common ingredient in American households today than it has been in many cultures throughout history. But it's time to change that.

Many recipes call for clarified butter. Martha Stewart swears by it for her scrambled eggs, and, according to Ina Garten, it's a great compromise for recipes that call for both oil and butter. Omelets benefit from the use of clarified butter as well, as do seafood, veggies, and meats ... the list goes on. Those of us who aren't straight puzzled at what "clarified" might refer to (like, really well-explained butter or ... ?) hop straight to ghee in our heads, but that's not right either.

To truly understand this liquid gold, named not only for its appearance but also for the wide range of properties it exhibits when heated, it's important to start with the basics: What exactly is it? How is it made and why is it different from ghee? Can you make it yourself? How should you use it in recipes? How should you store it? Accordingly, here's a look at everything that is — and isn't — clarified butter.

Before discussing clarified butter, it helps to start with a simpler question: What is butter? This may seem like a stupid question to ask, but it's not. Most of us think of a salty, yellow pat to spread on bread, or a bar to bake into cookies. However, butter comes in many forms: grass-fed, salted, unsalted, and even from ungulates other than cows, including sheep, horses, goats, camels, and yaks.

Differences like butterfat content also matter. According to federal standards, butter must contain at least 80 percent butterfat to be sold as such in the United States. Contrast this with the standards for European butter, which must have at least 82 percent butterfat, accounting for the richer taste and creamier nature that so many bakers prefer. Keep in mind that these are just minimums; some kinds of European butter, for instance, contain 85 percent butterfat or more. (Note that some labels also contain other percentages, such as how much of the butter is a product of grass-feeding, so make sure to distinguish between the two.)

So what's in that final 15 to 20 percent of butter? Water, salt, and milk solids. Clarified butter, then, is butter that has been melted until the fat and solids separate and the water boils off, leaving just the "liquid gold" behind. In other words, when you clarify butter, you collect only the butterfat.

Although the two are often mistaken for one another, clarified butter and ghee are two different things. Although they are made using different processes, they are almost always marketed using both terms on the label. What's a person to think when they see "ghee clarified butter" on a label, other than to assume that the two are the same thing? Naturally, ghee is delicious, and you can buy it in many different forms: plain, sea salt, cultured, and so forth. It's certainly not a bad ingredient; it's just different.

Ghee is clarified butter that has been cooked a specific way. Instead of simply melting the butter and pouring off the solids, ghee involves cooking the milk solids until they toast and sink to the bottom, which lends a different flavor to the final product. Those browned milk solids become almost nutty as they cook, an aroma and taste that permeates the ghee and transfers to meats, vegetables, and other ingredients that get cooked in it. Once cooked, you (or the manufacturer) strain out the milk solids and are left with pure, golden, toasty-smelling liquid that solidifies into a grainy but soft substance at room temperature.

The bottom line? While ghee is a type of clarified butter, not all clarified butter is ghee. If you go to buy it online or in a shop, however, you will likely only find ghee, because it is more shelf-stable than plain clarified butter. The longer cooking time boils water off completely and ensures that the browned milk solids get strained out, which reduces the chance of impurities and contamination.

The history of butter and its many forms is a long one. Most likely, butter first formed naturally when nomads kept milk in bags attached to their animals. In response to the jostle of travel, butter formed — a happy accident if ever there was one. From there, butter became a mainstay of Europe, Asia, and Africa (where it's been used for at least 8,000 years), but not the Americas. Without domesticated animals before European contact, some First Nations peoples instead made use of resources like nut milk to make butter.

Perhaps ironically, it's a bit difficult to offer a history of clarified butter, though, because it is so heavily confused with ghee online. Regarding ghee specifically, it's safe to say that humans have been using liquid gold for millennia, so it's also pretty safe to assume that humans had less exacting recipes for using milk solids as well. As with clarified butter, you can make ghee from a variety of milk types. Variations of this product hail from ancient times throughout India, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

It is a common ingredient in European cooking. In France, for instance, it's called hazelnut butter (beurre noisette), due to its nutty flavor and darker color. Given its longer shelf life, forms of clarified butter became a staple of Allied troops, who spread it on food. Its ability to withstand the high temperatures used in canning means you can preserve it, so lends itself well to mass production.

It should come as no surprise to discover that commercially made clarified butter is not the same as that which you'd make at home using a pot and stove. Commercial enterprises use several different tactics for making clarified butter, some of them basic, such as decantation (basically, pouring it off), and some of them a little more esoteric — centrifugation probably wins the medal for Least Inaccessible Method For Home Cooks.

In general, the clarification process involves heating the butter until the water evaporates off and the milk solids settle to the bottom. Manufacturers remove impurities that rise to the top as foam, creating a clear substance that can then be bottled. Interestingly, the manufacturing process for ghee is not noticeably different than that used at home: cooking the milk until the water evaporates and the milk solids fall to the bottom, then straining.

The smoke point of an oil or fat is the point at which it starts to smoke, releasing bitter-tasting compounds and unhealthy free radicals. The components in the fat begin to break down and transform into different compounds, occurring at different temperatures for different ingredients.

Standard butter has a low smoke point of 350 degrees Fahrenheit. When you clarify the butter, you significantly raise the smoke point by removing milk solids, which burn first. Simply pouring the butterfat off those solids raises the smoke point to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. However, you can take it further by cooking the milk solids and straining them out — making ghee. This raises the smoke point to an impressive 485 degrees Fahrenheit, which beats out everything on the market except the two most heat-tolerant oils: safflower (up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit) and refined avocado oil (up to 520 degrees Fahrenheit). So while both clarified butter and ghee are solidly less reactive than butter, the slightly higher smoke point of ghee means that you can trust it a little bit more when you need a fat to get really hot without burning, say when you're making popcorn.

While heat stability and smoke point are related, they are not the same thing. Heat stability relates not to when a fat will smoke, but rather how well it resists breaking down in response to heat. The best oils for high-heat cooking have lots of saturated fats (like clarified butter), which don't come apart easily when heated. This is important because some oils with a high smoke point (e.g. safflower) still have low heat stability, releasing free radicals even though they're not smoking.

Butter's characteristic flavoring agent is diacetyl, the compound that makes your brain go "Oooo ... butter!" even with your eyes closed. It's also the compound that's used in fake butter products and even in e-cigarettes to simulate the real flavor. When you encounter a typical pat of butter, diacetyl is what your tastebuds take away from the experience, along with salt and a bit of sweetness from the milk.

Clarifying butter changes its flavor in interesting ways. Much of the sweetness we associate with sticks of regular or European butter (the kind you find at the grocery store) comes from the milk solids, so that dairy-forward taste goes away when you strain them off. However, in their place, you have a richly concentrated butterfat that accompanies other strong flavors well — think meats, seafood, veggies, or eggs. With pure clarified butter, you will just have more of that buttery, umami flavor.

However, with ghee, you get something else again. Because production involves cooking the milk solids and releasing those rich, nutty flavors, ghee has a distinctly pleasant taste and aroma that deepens rather than just complements the flavors of ingredients it touches.

Happily for home chefs, clarified butter is easy to make at home. Ghee is simple to make yourself as well, so all you have to do is choose which recipe appeals more and follow the basic steps.

Several different methods exist to simply clarify butter without toasting the solids. They all involve melting the butter first, which is essential to get the fat, water, and milk solids to separate. Then, depending on what kind of butter it is and what technique you prefer to use, you can take one of several approaches. The first is skimming and pouring off the butter, as discussed above. The second is chilling and rinsing it, in which you let the milk solids settle, refrigerate the butter, take it out, then wash the solids off the bottom with hot water. The third is to pour the butter off, but this time use a strainer, which is the most reliable method for removing all milk solids. If you struggle to get the butter and solids to separate, try adding cornstarch.

When you're finished, put your clarified butter in a jar with a tight seal. If you didn't take a meticulous approach (guilty) and think there are a few milk solids left, then it should go in the fridge so it does not spoil. If you've taken care to avoid all solids or have made ghee, you can put it on a shelf in the pantry so that it stays soft and ready for scooping when you cook next.

When you need to sauté with lots of flavor but don't want to risk scorching, clarified butter is your friend. Think vegetables, seafood, and fish. Clarified butter is also used in hollandaise, where it emulsifies easily in the presence of egg yolks. It's also a classic accompaniment to crab and lobster, and the only thing they need in this writer's opinion.

More specifically, you'll find clarified butter called for in such cosmopolitan favorites as potato fondants (potatoes slow-roasted in garlic, butter, and stock); chicken tikka masala; the delicious pilaf known as shakh plov; baked cod; chicken schnitzel; confit salmon; and crispy eggplant with garlic yogurt. If that's not enough of a list to get you to run out to your nearest specialty shop, then seriously, what's it going to take?

Of course, we don't always have the time to confit and fondant and schnitzel things, in which case, you can always put clarified butter to more humble uses. Frying your eggs in it keeps them from sticking to the pan (a strategy to which this household is fiercely loyal), while naan is delicious when brushed in ghee ... though this writer can tell you from long experience that you can brush pretty much any bread product in either clarified butter or ghee and get the same result: heaven. Generally, any time you want lots of butter flavor without the burning potential of milk solids — fried potatoes, stir-fries, pancakes — clarified butter is a great choice.

Because the milk solids and water have been removed, clarified butter is considered shelf-stable: In an airtight container, it will last at room temperature for a good six months. Refrigerating and freezing can extend its shelf life further (as much as a year or more), though it's not quite as easy to scoop and use that way. If you are going to use it from the fridge, you might want to pull it out and bring it to room temperature beforehand, or else you're going to have to gouge the rock-solid butter out of the jar.

If you've made a super-de-duper large batch of ghee and don't think you'll get to it in time, that's okay: You can freeze it, too. Put it in an airtight container and pop it in the freezer, where it will last for a year as well. To be clear, food that's kept at the correct temperature of 0 degrees Fahrenheit will stay safe indefinitely, but it will not taste great that long, so use it within the year for maximum buttery goodness.

Note that even though you can keep clarified butter at room temperature, it's not ideal for a butter crock, since it is too soft and may slide out of the bell at the top. Due to the removal of milk solids, you don't have to worry about clarified butter going bad in the same way, so a regular jar is just fine. Keep the butter crock and its handy water seal for regular butter.

While a tablespoon of regular butter has 102 calories, a tablespoon of clarified butter contains 112, the difference due to the purer fat content that results from the removal of the water and milk solids. Being simply a different variety of clarified butter, it's no surprise that ghee has the same calories as clarified butter. In other words, the choice between butter, its clarified cousin, or ghee needn't be based on calories or health concerns, but rather on what the recipe calls for.

There is one exception to this, and that's in the case of dairy sensitivity. While clarified butter and ghee aren't dairy-free, they contain almost no lactose and casein — the compounds that trigger some people and make them feel crummy when they consume and have to digest milk products. Note that this is different from a dairy allergy, which causes a systemic immune response that can be dangerous. If that's the case, avoid ghee and clarified butter as well as regular butter and milk.

All types of butter have several nutritious compounds, but clarified versions such as ghee may have higher levels of some important ones. For instance, the amounts of vitamins A and E rise when butter is clarified. And, for those with a sensitivity (not allergy) who still want to be as careful as possible, ghee is probably the best bet, as it is considered completely free of casein and lactose. That said, butter only has small amounts, so regular and clarified butters are unlikely to cause as much sensitivity as, say, milk.