The Beauty Of Clarified Butter
Your online culinary arts program will not always call for the simplest use of ingredients. Clarified butter lasts far longer than regular butter as it can be refrigerated for several months. Also known as drawn butter, this product is unsalted and does not have any solids or water commonly found in regular butter. While butter is already a rich substance, clarified butter can be seen as the heart or essence of regular butter. If you are frying or sauteeing, clarified butter is ideal because it has a higher smoke point than its regular counterpart. Some foods require the flavor of the butter to be apparent in the dish.
The uses: Steak, veggie curry, omelettes and fried potatoes will turn out better if you use clarified butter. Additionally, if you have to make a bearnaise or hollandaise sauce you should also use clarified butter. A form called ghee is widely used in Indian cuisines for fried rice, cooking vegetables or searing meat. Pastries such as madeleines or genoise also call for its use.
How to make: If you want to make clarified butter you will need to melt unsalted butter at a low heat in a saucepan. Once the butter starts to melt, you should remove the top white foam or froth as this is the whey protein portion of the butter. After the solid milk reaches the saucepan there will be a layer of golden-yellow liquid in the middle. You should now remove the solid milk so you are only left with liquid.
As you are left with the bright yellow liquid in the saucepan, wait for it to stop bubbling. When you remove the saucepan from the stove you can let the clarified butter sit for a few minutes. Now you can take a strainer and run the liquid. What remains after you have strained the liquid is your homemade clarified butter.
The longer you cook butter the stronger the flavor of the final result. If you wait for the milk solids in the bottom of the saucepan to brown rather than remove it, they will eventually become golden brown. This will produce a nutty flavor and you now have noisette butter also known as brown butter. Hazelnut butter can be used in chocolate chip cookies, pound cake or cake frosting.
If you like this post, please be sure to check out the following!
The Basics Of Homemade Butter
The Difference Between Butter And Margarine
