Vol. IX · Fats and Oils Plate 5 of 10butter, clarified butter, ghee, brown butter, beurre noisette, milk solids, water, smoke pointMT

Butter.

Melt butter, boil it and keep watching. The foam subsides, the crackling stops, and in a minute the solids turn from white to hazelnut brown.

Butter is a water-in-fat emulsion (X.1): about 81 % milk fat, 16 % water, and a percent or two of milk proteins, lactose and salts. Heat it in a pan and it goes through stages a cook can hear and see. It melts. It foams and crackles while its water boils off at 100 °C. When the water has gone the crackling stops and the temperature climbs; the milk solids sink and begin to brown by the Maillard reaction (VIII.1), smelling of hazelnuts and toffee: beurre noisette, brown butter. A little further and they burn.

Each stage is a tool. Skim and strain at the end of the foaming stage and you have clarified butter: pure fat that smokes near 230 °C rather than 150 °C (IX.3) and will fry an egg without burning. Cook it gently until the solids just colour, then strain, and you have Indian ghee, nutty and long-keeping because it holds almost no water. The workshop heats butter in a pan and times the stages.

Below: the minutes spent melting, boiling off the water and browning the milk solids for the amount of butter and heat you choose, and the yield of clarified butter (USDA composition; the timing is a teaching energy budget).

What you will learn
Workshop
Butter composition from USDA FoodData Central. Teaching energy budget on a 3 kW gas burner of which 40 % reaches the pan and 70 % of that the butter: warming and melting (about 2.1 kJ/kg K and 80 kJ/kg of fat to melt), boiling off the water (2.26 kJ/g), then browning the milk solids at a surface near 140 °C with the course Maillard rate, multiplied by four for their lactose and protein.

Listen to the pan

Butter is 81 % fat and 16 % water in the USDA tables. On a low-to-medium flame, 250 g melts in about 3.8 min, foams for 6 min while its 40 g of water boils off, and then browns in about 1.4 min more — the browning is quick once the water has gone, which is why brown butter must be watched and poured into a cool bowl the moment it smells of hazelnuts. Clarifying 250 g yields about 202 g of fat.

Use the stages. Whole butter is for flavour at moderate heat: basting a steak at the end (XV.2), finishing a sauce (XXII.7), cooking eggs gently. Clarified butter or ghee is for frying hot: the dal tadka, the crisp potato rösti, the fried egg with lacy edges. Brown butter is a sauce and an ingredient: over fish or gnocchi with sage, or cooled and creamed into cookies for a toffee depth, remembering that its water has gone and the dough may need a spoonful more liquid.

At the stove

Melt 100 g of butter in a light-coloured pan over medium heat and do not stir. Listen to the crackle while the water boils; when it falls silent, watch the solids on the bottom turn golden then brown, smell them, and pour into a bowl at once.

Ghee keeps for months without refrigeration in Indian kitchens because almost no water is left for microbes and its browned solids add antioxidants; it has been made this way for thousands of years.

Terms

Clarified butter
Butter with its water and milk solids removed: pure milk fat.
Ghee
Butter cooked until the solids brown slightly, then strained; nutty and long-keeping.
Beurre noisette
Brown butter: butter heated until its milk solids turn hazelnut brown.
Milk solids
The proteins, lactose and salts in butter, which brown and burn.
Butter is fat, water and milk solids. Boil off the water for clarified butter or ghee; brown the solids for brown butter.

Sources

  1. USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy (April 2018), public domain.
  2. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.
  3. H. McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd ed., Scribner, 2004.