What Is Clarified Butter? Removing the Parts That Burn

Butter is roughly four fifths fat, with the remainder being water and milk solids, principally proteins and a small amount of milk sugar. Those minor components are responsible for most of its behaviour in a pan. The water causes the spluttering when butter hits heat, since it boils off. The proteins and sugar brown and then burn at temperatures well below where the fat itself would smoke, which is why butter blackens at heat that oil tolerates easily. The same components are what spoil, since they support microbial growth and go rancid, which limits how long butter keeps. Removing them therefore addresses several problems at once, leaving a fat that can be heated far higher, that does not splutter, and that keeps at room temperature for an extended period.

The process is straightforward and the variations produce noticeably different results:

• •Melt gently, which separates the mixture into three layers as foam rises and solids sink
• •Skim the foam from the top, which is protein driven up by escaping steam
• •Let the water boil off, which stops the spluttering and signals that the process is nearly complete
• •Pour off the clear fat, leaving the browned solids behind on the bottom
• •Stop early for a pale neutral fat, which is the standard clarified version
• •Continue until the solids brown and toast before straining, which produces the nuttier ghee of South Asian cooking

The practical advantages follow directly from what has been removed. The smoke point rises from around a hundred and fifty degrees to over two hundred, which puts it in the range of oils suitable for frying and searing while retaining a buttery flavour that oils do not have. It does not burn during long cooking, so it suits techniques where butter would blacken. It does not splutter, which matters when adding food to a hot pan. It keeps for months without refrigeration, which is why it developed in warm climates before refrigeration existed and why it remains standard in those cuisines. And it contains essentially no milk sugar or protein, which makes it tolerable for many people who cannot take dairy, though the residue is not zero and the claim needs qualifying.

What gets discarded is worth a word, since it is the flavourful part and throwing it away is a loss. The browned solids left in the pan after making ghee carry an intense nutty taste and are used deliberately in several cuisines, stirred into rice, spread on bread or added to sweets. The foam skimmed off earlier is milder. This also explains why clarified butter tastes less of butter than butter does, since a substantial part of what people identify as butter flavour comes from those milk components and from the compounds produced when they brown rather than from the fat itself. Cooks wanting both the heat tolerance and the flavour therefore sometimes combine the two, using clarified butter for the cooking and finishing the dish with a small quantity of ordinary butter, which contributes the flavour at a temperature that will not burn it.

Clarified butter is old and its distribution follows climate. Ghee has been made in South Asia for several thousand years and appears in the earliest Sanskrit texts, where it holds a ritual as well as a culinary position, being poured into sacrificial fires and treated as a purifying substance. Comparable preparations exist across the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, frequently spiced during the clarifying, which both flavours the fat and, with certain spices, extends its keeping further. The reason for the concentration in warm regions is straightforward, since butter goes rancid quickly in heat and clarifying was the available preservation method. European cooking uses clarified butter for specific purposes rather than as a staple, since the climate permitted ordinary butter to keep and since oils were available, which is an example of a technique's distribution being set by a practical constraint rather than by taste.

Butter is a fifth water and milk solids, and those are what splutter, burn at moderate heat and go rancid. Removing them raises the smoke point from around a hundred and fifty degrees to over two hundred and allows storage for months without refrigeration. Stopping early gives a neutral fat and browning the solids first gives ghee, which developed where heat made ordinary butter impractical.