MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
 
      Title: Clarified Butter
 Categories: Misc, Sauces
      Yield: 1 servings
 
    1/4 lb Unsalted butter (one stick)
 
  Clarified butter is superior to regular butter in two salient ways.
  You can fry with it at a highter temperature and you can store it
  longer. These benefits are not won without a sacrifice: Clarified
  butter lacks most of the characteristic buttery flavor that mainly
  comes from one of the removed substances, the protein casein.
  
  You can fry with clarified butter at a higher temperature because you
  raise its smoke point from about 250F to 350F when you remove the
  butter's protein, which is the component that scorches first.
  
  Clarified butter has a longer storage life because it is primarily the
  protein in the butter that makes butter vulnerable to spoilage. If is
  superclarified, as in the fabled ghee of India, you can store
  clarified butter at room temperature for months without ill-effects.
  
  To clarify butter, you must separate the fat from the nonfat
  ingredients. The more completely you remove the nonfats, the more
  suited your clarified butter will be for frying and storing. Many
  otherwise intelligently written cookbooks detail unnecessarily
  burdensome procedures for doing this. Our method is less complicated.
  Moreover, it eliminates the risk of scorching even one molecule of
  butter, a threat posed by the often recommended technique of melting
  it in a pan over a flame.
  
  When butter melts, its emulsion breaks down. The butter then begins to
  separate into three distinct strata: a thin, whitish upper layer of
  foam; a thick, yellow middle layer of fat (your clarified butter); a
  medium-thin, whitish bottom layer of water infused with carbohydrates
  and, especially, proteins, casein being the most important.
  
  The protein-carbohydrate water solution that makes up the bottom layer
  contains no fat because the fat, having a lower specific density than
  the material below, follows the immutable law of nature by rising.
  (Or you could say with equal logic that the solution sinks.)
  
  The foamy upper layer is often erroneously referred to as an
  impurity-based scum. This layer is principally made up of water,
  proteins, and carbohydrates, and is thus similar to the bottom layer.
  It is prevented from dropping through the fat layer because the
  trapped air in the frothy structure literally keeps these particular
  nonfats floating on top of the fat layer. By the time the bubbles
  burst, the fat layer will have solidified, preventing the denser
  upper layer from settling to its natural level.
  
  The air bubbles form chiefly because, as the butter melts, bacteria
  alone attack some of the carbohydrate lactose, fermenting that milk
  sugar and thereby producing carbon dioxide gas (as well as some
  alcohol). Another source of the gas in the bubbles is the air content
  of the butter (most American unsalted butters area about 4 percent
  air by volume).
  
  When your melted de-emulsified butter is refrigerated, the fat layer
  solidifies. Refrigerator temperature is not cold enough to firm the
  watery bottom layer.
  
  1) Cut up a stick of unsalted butter into small chunks. The smaller
  the chunks, the more quickly the butter melts. Place the chunks in a
  cup-sized bowl.  Cover the bowl and place it on the warm spot over
  your stove's pilot-light area, or place the bowl in an oven set at
  its lowest possible heat.
  
  2) Do not stir the butter. When the butter has completely melted (30
  to 60 minutes) store the covered bowl in the refrigerator for at
  least 1 hour. Do not disturb the bowl until the middle layer has
  solidified.
  
  3) Lift out the solidified fat disk. Scrape off as much of the foam
  and slimy bottom layer as you can without damaging the disk. Finish
  the cleaning step by quickly rinsing the disk under cold running tap
  water. Pat it dry with a paper towel.
  
  If kept covered and in the refrigerator, clarified butter of this
  sort can be stored for weeks, and often longer.
  
  To make superclarified butter, repeat the process until no traces of
  the nonfats remain.  Ideally, you will end up with 100 percent butter
  fat (technically, milk fat).
  
  Kitchen Science, by Howard Hillman ISBN 0-395-48072-8
 
MMMMM