How to Butter

Dead Internet search algorithms have reportedly made my post on how to make popcorn hard to find. Re-sharing it on Twitter kicked off a series of cooking discussions, which led to the subject of butter itself.

Note: I do not use, nor do I recommend you use, butter on popcorn. That’s what coconut oil is for.

What I do recommend in the strongest possible terms is that my readers clarify their own butter at home.

It takes like half an hour. And that small time investment gets you enough restaurant quality, high smoke point butter for your frying and sautéing needs to last weeks.

Here’s what you do:

• Buy 2 pounds of the cheapest butter you can find.
• Melt all of it in a saucepan.
• Simmer until the milk solids separate.
• Turn off the heat.
• Pour the melted butter into a steel or glass bowl.
• Let stand  about 20 minutes.
• In that time, the milk solids will have risen to the top. Skim them off with a ladle.
• Pour the rest of the melted butter through a cheesecloth into a parchment paper-lined pan.
• Refrigerate until the clarified butter solidifies.
• Remove the butter disc from the pan by gently pulling up on the parchment paper.
• Wrap up the butter disc in the same parchment and store.

Then you just cut off a piece whenever you need it. Simple as.

For a visual guide, Chef Jean-Pierre has more:

Bonus tip

If you want to be like the hipster kids and make your own ghee, perform the steps above, but add this one …

• While simmering the melted butter, toast the milk solids until they are golden brown & the butter itself turns amber.

What do clarified butter and ghee have over regular butter, you ask?

1. A way higher smoke point – like 100 degrees higher (450 instead of 350) That means no crusting up in the pan when you want to fry eggs. Plus, get enough clarified butter, and you can fry a chicken in it.
2. No lactose, for those who are intolerant
3. Ghee in particular has a nutty flavor that’s perfect for baked goods.

I, for one, love to whip up a batch of author David Stewart’s cinnamon protein biscuits using ghee instead of ordinary butter.

Here’s his recipe:

The question remains, why do you want to do all this when you can just buy clarified butter and ghee at the store?

For one, the prepackaged stuff is incredibly expensive.

What I do is buy a pound of the cheapest generic butter I can (for as little as 2 bucks) then clarify it myself.

That is one-tenth the cost of the first ghee above.

You’re welcome.

And speaking of cinnamon …

Space pirates OD on the spice from Dune and wake up on Cthulhu’s couch

Read it now: