I feel vindicated. I’ve been poo-pooing the “health” freaks for years about those dreaded animal fats. Suddenly, with the “trans-fat” hysteria, animal fats are fashionable again. Even lard is making a comeback.
But I’m not going to talk about lard today. I’m going to talk about butter.
If you’ve ever tried cooking with butter, you’ve noticed that it burns at inconveniently low temperatures. But it isn’t the butter that burns; it’s the milk solids in the butter. Restaurants buy very high quality butter in bulk (the lower the milk solid content, the higher the quality), so butter you can cook with, without fear of burning, is hard to find, and very expensive when you find it. Butter actually has a very high smoking point, as high as lard, and almost as high as vegetable oil.
If you want that beautiful golden color, only butter will do it for you. Not oil, not lard (certainly not lard), not (shudder) shortening, nothing will give you that deep golden brown except butter.
The solution is clarified butter (AKA drawn butter, or in India, ghee). Directions for clarifying butter, at least all the directions I’ve seen, are almost uselessly vague, so here, in detail (most of which I’ve learned through trial and error) is how to clarify your own butter.
I do it two pounds at a time. You can clarify more or less. Note that clarified butter is very hard and brittle, very different from butter you buy. Milk solids spoil more quickly than the butter, so once clarified, butter should keep a good month or so in the refrigerator.
The smaller the circumference of the pan, the easier it is to do, so use a small sauce pan. If your butter is solid (that is, not in sticks), cut each pound lenghwise in half. Put the butter in the pan, and turn the flame on, very low. Simmer low.
When the butter is all melted, turn off the heat. Let it sit a good thirty minutes. This lets the milk solids settle out to the bottom of the pan.
Line a strainer with a double thickness of cheesecloth, run under cold water and thoroughly wrung out. With a slotted spoon, and without tipping the pan, remove the crust floating on the top. Now, very slowly pour the butter through the strainer, holding the pan steady throughout so you don’t mix the solids back up with the butter. You’ll see the whitish milk solids. Pour off as much as you can without the solids.
Refrigerate.
You can buy ghee — clarified butter — but it’s ridiculously expensive. Make your own.
Speaking of, back in the 18th century, Americans, like Brits, used suet extensively. In the 19th century for a lot of reasons, one of which was the large immigration of central and eastern Europeans, pork became America’s most consumed meat, and by the middle of the 19th century, suet had all but disappeared from recipes.
It’s a pity, because suet adds a woderful, deep, beefy flavor. You can buy suet (tallow, actually) in nearly any supermarket, but you have to render it. Here’s how.
Dice the suet and put it in a large pan. Turn the oven to 275, and put the pan in the oven. Check it every thirty minutes, pressing the still solid pieces of fat down into the melted fat. Some of these will become cracklings, and won’t melt. When you get to the point that you have nothing but rendered suet and cracklings, take it out of the oven, then strain into a container and refrigerate (like clarified butter, suet is very hard and brittle). Great stuff.
You would render lard the same way. Unlike the flavorless lard you buy in the store, home-rendered lard, like suet, is deeply flavorful.
Salted or unsalted butter?
Butter is salted to preserve it, not flavor it. This is why unsalted butter, which has a shorter shelf life, is more expensive. Once you adjust to unsalted butter on the table, and you do have to adjust, there’s no going back. Having said that, I buy salted and unsalted butter. I clarify salted butter, and use unsalted on the table (and in baking).
Buying exclusively unsalted is, in my opinion, silly, and a waste of money. Yes, usalted is going to be fresher, but I have yet to buy butter that had turned. I don’t see the point — other than chi-chi points — in buying only unsalted.