Butter – Clarified – Sous Vide

WHY CLARIFY BUTTER?

The problems with regular butter are:

  1. It has a low smoke point (about 350 degrees) which means it burns easily.
  2. If you keep your butter too long, the water and the milk proteins can spoil, making the butter rancid.

The best way to fix both of these problems is to remove the water and milk proteins (clarify it).

  1. Clarified butter lasts a lot longer in the refrigerator and it has a smoke point of about 450 degrees.
  2. Clarified butter is better for frying and sauteeing where you want to bring out the flavor from browning the food and not the flavor of the burning butter.

There are several ways to clarify butter.   This is very easy because there is no chance of burning the butter.

Ingredients:

  • Unsalted Butter
    • Salted can work in a pinch

Instructions:

  1. Heat the water to 185 degrees.
  2. Put the butter in a vacuum bag.
  3. Sous Vide for 30 minutes.
  4. You can pour the yellow butter off into a separate container or just put the bag, upright, in the refrigerator to cool. The butter should separate from the water and milk solids so you can just lift if off and rinse off any white solids.
  5. As an added precaution, you should heat the mixture on the stove to a few degrees above boiling and cook until it stops sputtering to get all the water out of the butter.
  6.  Use or refrigerate for a very long time (because the water and milk proteins were the parts of the butter that led to spoilage).  It really does not even need to be refrigerated if ALL the water and proteins are removed.
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