Home Cooking Tips & Advice

How to clarify butter

Have a recipe that calls for clarified butter and you have no idea what that is or how to do it? Fortunately, while it is a more advanced cooking technique, it is not that difficult to do.

Clarifying means to make something cloudy clear. So what you are doing is taking melted butter that looks cloudy and making it look clear.

To clarify butter, first melt it in a saucepan or frying pan. As it is melting, you need to use a spoon to skim off the foamy fat & whey that floats on the top as it separates from the butter. Then, once it is melted, you will strain the butter to remove the heavier milk solids that sink to the bottom of the pan. In the end, you are left with pure, very yellow butterfat.

Note, for anything calling for clarified butter, you do need to use real butter. Margarine won't work the same!