The Simple Way To Keep Butter From Burning According To Julia Child

The late chef, global culinary icon, and spy Julia Child was such a font of food knowledge that even her parentheticals were packed with terrific tips. In an old episode of "The French Chef" titled "The Mushroom Show," for example, the twists and turns along the way to creating fantastic fungi detour down other informative roads. As she began to saute mushrooms, Child explained clarified or oil-fortified butter won't burn in the pan like a pat straight off the stick. Even this simple aside could be game changing for anyone who has to race against the clock while trying to butter baste a steak before the melted gold gets singed.

Butter has a lower smoke point than many cooking oils due to the presence of milk solids, while oils are absent these solids. That's why something like canola oil can shimmer and crackle in a cast-iron pan for quite a while, while the butter will bubble into a burnt hue pretty quickly. Clarifying butter removes those solids and butter's water content, making the clarified version perform more like a longer lasting oil. Cutting butter with a spot of oil likewise dilutes the milk solids and results in a higher smoke point. Butter and oil can certainly save your dish in a pinch, and clarifying butter is easy enough to plan for.

Should you be tempted to pick up some premade ghee from the grocery store, go ahead! Although they are very similar, however, know that ghee and clarified butter are not exactly the same thing. Ghee will notably taste nuttier because the milk solids and water are cooked out longer, leading to a more concentrated butterfat flavor. If that kind of depth isn't on the menu, you'll want to clarify your own batch of butter.

To clarify butter, melt it low and slow in a saucepan on the stove until its components begin to visibly separate. This can take around 10 minutes, at which point you'll have milk foam on top, some milk solid stragglers at the bottom, and your newly clarified butter suspended in between. After you let it cool, skim the foam off the top and run the rest through some cheese cloth into a heat-proof container like a Mason jar to remove the water and leftover milk solids. You can keep it in the refrigerator (where it will firm up once more) for about a month for all your mushroom sauteing or higher smoke point needs.