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I was looking at this question:

How do I butter popcorn without making it soggy?

And it got me wondering: is there any instance, either using melted butter for popcorn or in some other application, where simply melted but not clarified/rendered butter should be used?

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samthebrand
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1 Answers1

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Essentially clarified butter is butter that has all it's water and milk solids removed. All that is left is butterfat.

Pros and Cons of Clarified/Rendered butter:

Pros:

  • It can be stored longer than regular butter
  • It has a higher smoke point so can be heated higher without burning
  • Does contain negligible lactose for those lactose-intolerant

Cons:

  • Effort. It requires so time to melt the butter, boil off the water, filter out the milk fat, and resolidify the butter again.
  • Taste. Because the milk solids are filtered out, it has a milder "butter" taste than unclarified butter. Of course it will still be much more rich and buttery compared to regular vegetable oil.

With this information in mind, I will leave it to yourself to decide when you should and should not use clarified butter.

Jay
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