How Clarified Butter Saved My Life

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A Life Lived Enjoying Everything…

In Moderation

I come from  humble farming stock. My grandparents on my mother’s side ( Grandpappy and Nana) ran a dairy farm in the idyllic Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand’s Upper East Coast. You could say I have milk in my DNA, and more importantly, creamy New Zealand butter.

As many of my local friends can attest too,  one of my biggest homesick triggers is  New Zealand milk, cream, ice cream and butter. There is something kind of wonderful that goes into New Zealand dairy products that makes for exceptional baking and cooking. Heck, even the morning cereal tastes better when its swimming in New Zealand milk.

I put this exceptional quality down to all those golf course green fields, fresh air and happy farmers. The weather is perfect for creating lush pastures for stock to graze on and there’s enough open spaces for cows to frolic in the fields. We don’t do intensive farming of dairy cattle which makes for happy cows that still hold up traffic twice a day on many rural roads when the farmer is moving the herd  to the milking sheds.

My love for New Zealand butter started at a young age and has intensified since moving so far away from it. Thankfully I have tracked down a Sydney inner city supplier that has these blocks of gold for sale. I like to buy up as many as I can carry each time I visit the store so that I don’t run out in the middle of a banana cake making session.

I have added to my fridge a silver chalice, from which springs forth the elixir of life. Clarified butter has replaced canola  and grape-seed oil as my frying medium. This has been a revelation in my kitchen as I can now enjoy the flavor of butter at high temperatures!

Clarified butter or ‘Ghee’ as its known in Hindi is butter that has gone through a ridiculously simple clarification process to separate the protein or milk solids from the pure butter fat. The pure butter is then poured off  leaving the milk solids behind to be discarded. It’s these milk solids or protein that cause the butter to brown and burn at low temperatures. Pure butter on the other hand is now so resilient that you could even use it to deep fry with, not that I recommend wasting your clarified butter in that way.

Instead I recommend that you store it into your favorite small vessel and allow it to take pride in place in your fridge to use as a worthy replacement for oil. It can also be stored on the shelf provided it is in an airtight container. So if you must use a fat or oil to fry with, a small amount of clarified butter will work wonders on the end result.

Clarified Butter

Ingredients

1 block/1 pound/ 500gms of butter ~ some folks call for unsalted butter. Personally I prefer salted as it has better flavor.

Method

• On the lowest heat setting possible, place the butter into a heavy bottomed saucepan and ever so gently allow it to melt.
• Once the butter has completely melted, carefully pour the butter fat from the pan, making sure that the white milk fat stays behind in the pan to be disposed of.

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it! Heres a few pointers to bear in mind when undertaking this calcification process.

• The trick here is to do it on such low temperature that the butter resists the need to bubble and splutter. A lot of bubbling and spluttering will have the reverse effect on what you are trying to achieve which is the separation of butter fat and protein or milk solids.
• If you allow the butter to melt gently the milk solids will sit on the bottom of the pan and all you need do is pour the melted butter fat directly from the pan for easy separation.
• An induction cook-top is one of the best ways to achieve a low heat setting. If you don’t have an induction cook-top you can try this little trick that works really well. Place a heavy bottomed frying pan on your cook-top on the lowest possible heat setting. Place the pot with butter into the frying pan and melt gently. The frying pan will act as a diffuser allowing the temperature of the cook-top to remain low and even. Splatter free butter!