The Difference Between Clarified Butter and Ghee | Alton Brown (2024)

Clarified butter is simply butter that has been cooked to remove any water and solids. Besides making the kitchen smell amazing, turning butter to clarified butter also gives the fat a higher smoke point (this just means you can cook with it at high temperatures) and lengthens the shelf life of the resulting fat.

Use clarified butter for frying and sautéing — it is excellent for cooking eggs, popping popcorn or cooking steak. Clarified butter also makes a mean hollandaise.

Ghee is clarified butter cooked further to nutty golden perfection. It’s basically an extreme version of clarified butter with a shelf life like uranium.

This recipe first appeared on altonbrown.com.