Neil Saavedra

And what you'll have is clarified butter, no water in it and the milk solids removed.

What does that do?

Well, it gives it a nutty flavor.

Because that milk fat in the process of rendering starts to caramelize and get that nutty flavor to it, which is wonderful.

But really what it does is it changes the smoke point.

Smoke point is important in oils and fats because the smoke point is when they start to break down.

that's when they lose some of their properties.

That's when they start to get nasty smelling and things like that and end up bringing a foul odor and taste to something rather than the loveliness that they're supposed to.

Butter comes in at about 325, 375.

That's when it starts to break down.

That's when it starts to smoke really heavily.

And that's why sauteing in butter, usually you'll cut it with some olive oil or something like that.

The olive oil has a higher smoke point, kind of takes care of that and buffers the butter.

But what you can do is saute.

When you're doing steaks, if you're going to sear them off, you're roasting vegetables, you can use clarified butter or ghee.

And that'll boost that smoke point up to around 485.

So you get about 100 degree higher heat

out of clarified butter that doesn't have that milk fat.

Also, a lot of it has the lactose, the casein that is the lactose and all of that kind of wicked out.

And so those that are intolerant or have a milk allergy usually can handle clarified butter even better.