Melting butter
 

Anyone here want to chat about melting butter?

I gotta be honest - I use the microwave almost entirely when I need to melt butter, unless I'm doing it just to cook with it on the stove. But sometimes, baked goods or breads require melted butter, so that goes in the microwave.

But I hate when some of the water in the butter explodes, and sends half your butter all over the inside of the science oven. That stuff's hard to clean up.

But if I'm cooking with it, obviously it just goes straight in the pan or pot.

Now, there is one instance where I melt a butt load of butter all at once - when I'm making ghee. I'll put like 2 pounds in the dutch oven and melt that, but then I keep on cooking it until the milk solids separate and start to brown and all the water in the oil boils out. By the way, I wouldn't really recommend cultured butter for this, as you mostly lose all the complexities of the nice butter. I've had equally good experiences with $7/pound butter as the cheaper stuff.

Please tel me you don't nuke it when making a roux...

Oh, god no.

What's ghee?

Stove. Always.

It's butter fat that's been separated from the milk solids and allowed the water to evaporate. So it's like clarified butter you'd get with lobster or crab, but it's allowed to cook a little longer, until the milk solids start to brown on the bottom of the pan. That gives it a really awesome nuttiness.

I keep some around all the time, it's super easy to make and is ridiculously good.

Good, because I would have had to kill you.

You would have had to stand in line behind me.

Why does margarine ruin my popcorn when I melt it and pour it over? It turns the popcorn into mush. It resembles my dong after a Melissa McCarthy flick.

So basically it's a nut butter?

:spock:

Not at all. It's oil with a very high smoke point that tastes like butter's supermodel big sister.

Because it hates you and your popcorn. Butter loves you and your popcorn.

Seriously, I can't really figure out why. My initial thought would be the water content, but apparently margarine and butter have to be at least 80 percent fat and typically have very similar water contents.

That's a joke son. A real flag waver.

Oh, my bad. I missed the funny bits, so you'll understand why I didn't get it. ;)

Nut. Butter. Nut butter.

What a douchebag.

I can't believe it's nut butter!

I'm going to laugh hysterically when this thread outpaces yours.

And dude, chill out. Just having some fun.

ROFL

When I melt butter in the microwave for baked goods, I set the time for as short as possible. When about half has melted I swish the melted butter on the solid butter until it melts all the way. Takes a little bit of time but keeps it from splattering in the microwave.

Yeah, that's what I do most of the time. Sometimes you get some tricky butter, though.

I typically do 15 seconds at a time until it's almost all melted, then leave it alone. The residual heat will finish the process.

Better butter barely burns.

I only melt butter in cast iron
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And on top of that, Billy Burger built a bigger better burger. A bigger better burger Billy Burger built.

:D

i melt butter with something hot

Bully for Billy but the benchmark of the best burgers is if it's built with a beautiful ball of beef unbound by breadcrumbs and broiled with bubbling brie on a buttery brioche bun.

You mean hot like the chick in the Iowa gif?

that girl could melt my butter ALL DAY LONG

knowhatimsayin

I'll bet Billy's bigger better burger didn't have any goddamn Goldfish crackers in it.

Slow melt on the stove... I've done it in the oven on low a few times too.

Anyone want to talk about gunt butter?

Tell about the schmegma you found on your keyboard.

Allowing butter to reach room temperature first can really make things easy and quick, and it can help avoid the explosion you can get in the microwave.

:thumb:

So, apparently "go get the butter" is infamous for referring to butt sex. Who knew?

When I see commercials for the mortgage company James B. Nutter in KC, all I see is James Nut Butter. I'm ****ed up.

You'll see it that way now. Sorry!

Hey FMB, I am sure you posted it somewhere before, so a thousand pardons for failure to exhaust the search function, but...

Would you be kind enough to re-post your ghee recipe? Recommendations for butter to start with would be great, as well.

TIA and Ciao
Dinny

I feel like I've been cheated out of precious moments of life after reading more than a couple of paragraphs about melting butter.

1/5 stars for the thread. Would not read again.

I make ghee in a fat separator. It's pretty simple. Put a stick of butter in the separator and microwave for about one minute. Let sit and separate. The timing depends on the microwave and the separator, but you get the idea.

This isn't really ghee. What you've described is clarified butter (nothing wrong with that, it's very tasty in its own right). While ghee is a form of clarified butter, in order for it to become ghee you actually need to get some of those milk solids to caramelize a bit.

In depth, if anyone cares: http://www.willcookforfriends.com/20...ak-friday.html

I like to do it in the oven, but it takes less time on the stove top (but you have to keep a close eye on it).

Put a pound of butter into a Dutch oven (light colored interior is best so you can see the color). Set oven to 250 and start looking in on it after an hour. You're looking for the bubbling to subside, which is the water boiling out. Then you're looking for the milk solids to turn golden brown. Once you're satisfied with the browning and water being gone, take it of the oven and let it cool awhile.

As for getting the particles out, strain it through a clean tea towel or coffee filter. No need to skim, no worry about bits falling into it. Very simple.

And the ghee will keep for 6 months at room temp, or pretty much indefinitely in the fridge.

This is true, but my Indian colleague makes it this way. To make "real" ghee things go far beyond caramelizing milk solids. They don't bother, so why should I?

Well, clarified butter is super tasty by itself, not knocking it by any means.

Not sure what you mean by "way beyond," because I've never read anything close to that for plain ghee (without any spices). It's not as far as brown butter. It does take more time because you want all of the water gone, which doesn't happen with clarified.

But as to your question... Why? Because it's super easy and tastes better! :)

Why would you ruin one of your quality ingredients by using a microwave to melt it? It affects the flavor.

I use my itty-bitty melting pan when I want to melt butter. There's a gadget for everything.


http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225...-M77WGKn5Q.jpg

I always have two sticks on the counter (covered) so there's soft better ready to go. When one stick is done, the next comes out.

As for melting, I do nuke it, but I do it on "2" and I do it in 5-10 second increments (fork-stirring along the way).

True ghee has additional cultures, similar to yogurt. I don't know the details, but it sounds like a pain in the ass. So, there's ghee1, ghee2 and ghee3. Ghee3 is authentic, the others are simple variations.

I think you're talking about "true ghee" being made from the very start, which is raw milk that is boiled, cooled, and then treated with curd cultures. Once you've got butter, you're doing things the same.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, really, Stewie. I like you, and your knowledge in food is well documented here.

But I'm specifically trying to find anything online that tells me about additional cultures used for ghee, even trying to find "authentic" Indian ghee recipes, and I'm finding nothing except something that is basically what I've been making. I even searched "ghee3" to no avail.

Unless this authentic ghee isn't pure oil - which as I understand it is a requirement of ghee - there's no way any cultures would grow in it.

The closest thing I could find to what you're talking about this: http://www.indiacurry.com/dairy/d005ghee.htm, which has you make a cultured butter before making the ghee. But the process of making the ghee is exactly the same, which means you could do it with pretty much any kind of butter as long as you didn't care about being 100 percent authentic. And if you did, you could buy cultured (European) butter. I've done that, by the way, and couldn't tell much of a difference, if any.

So perhaps you're friend is adding in the cultured butter step, which would make sense with what you're saying, and I totally agree would be an awful lot of work for ghee.

Beat me to the punch. I agree.

I bought my first ghee in a jar at the organic food market. Now, that's what I call easy! Easiest ghee ev'ah!

Just out of curiosity, how much money for how much ghee?

I can't remember. It was three weeks ago—maybe. I may still have the receipt but I got a lot of travel stuff splayed all around right now.

FMB, I just checked the label thinkin' it may have a price on it but no. IIRC it was about $5.99 - $7-8'ish (no more than that) for 7.5 ozs.

But whaddya know, the label says "Organic GHEE" with the words "Clarified Butter" right under that.

Thought I'd add more confusion to the debate with that. :evil:

Melting butter
 

No confusion. Ghee is a type of clarified butter. I mentioned that in post 43.

Regarding your buy, making it at home you can more than double your value.

Yeah, but time is money and that was made with organic butter. Ingredients on the side say: "Certified Organic Butter."

Organic butter costs an arm-and-a-leg or thereabouts.

To be honest with you, making ghee is one thing that I find too challenging. I made it once in college and it was a disaster. Can't bear to waste good butter now.

It doesn't take a lot of time, only about 15 minutes if you do it on the stovetop. And you can get a pound of organic butter for less than $7, you end up with about 12 ounces of ghee.

:thumb:

Hmmmm...

Even electric stovetops? 'Cause I don't want to tell you how many disasters, including burnt pans, I've had whereas I had none when I had gas in Boston area.

That's a "Good Thing?" /MarthaStewart]

I've done it on an electric before, with no problems. But on the stove top, you can't turn your back on it. It can go from ghee to brown butter to beurre noir fast.

That was a thumbs up of understanding.

Yup! I've had that happen on electric enough! I hardly use butter at all anymore to cook with.

It took a while, but this thread just passed Iowhinian's Camp Confidential thread. ROFL ROFL

Well, then I'll have to bump it!

I hardly ever cook with plain butter as my oil. Burns too easily.

This is why.

For some reason, "Melting Butter" sounds like a good name for a movie.:hmmm:

But ghee doesn't burn like that. Ghee has a very high smoke point.

Yes I know. I learned that from you a few threads earlier. In fact, when I was at my organic/natural supermarket I saw that jar on the shelf, and if it weren't for you I would have passed right by it without a second thought.

Now, see what you've done. You got me spending. :p

I'm trying to get you to try making your own again. :harumph:



;)

From "Chocolat" to "Butter"... One is a French Romance, the other the Trailer Park version of the same..

Hey FMB, can you link me to your post on how to prep a ribeye. Ya' know the whole how to salt procedure. Bought my first ev'ah ribeye. Wanna try it your way, but it's buried somewhere. Or you can just repost it.

Pretty Please with Ghee on top! :grovel:

I have no idea where that post is, in which thread. So I'll just retype. It's pretty simple.

I like to salt a day in advance. Just put it on a tray, liberally salt like you would for a steak, cover it and put it in the fridge. I'll often just use a Ziploc bag.

If you don't have a day, you can do this anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple days in advance. I like a day because I think it gives me the best flavor and texture for my liking. But don't do it for less than 30 minutes or you won't get that dry brine effect.

An hour before you cook it, bring it out of the fridge, pat dry, and allow to come to room temperature. Season with pepper and whatever else you want to season with (for a ribeye, I'm strictly a salt and pepper guy). Grill or pan fry, rest, and enjoy.

Alternatively, if you do the freeze your steak thing, pat it dry after a day to make sure it's as dry as can be and pop it in the freezer for a half hour before cooking.

K thanks. What kind of salt? Kosher, sea fine or coarse, any other?

Gonna screen save your post and put in one of my cooking folders.

Kosher.

Just did it thanks.