Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

Clarified butter is a staple of kitchens all over the world, prized for its rich flavor and relatively high smoke point.Unlike whole butter, clarified butter is cooked until the fat, milk solids, and water separate and the water is boiled away, leaving you with milk solids and fat. Once strained of milk solids, clarified butter can be heated to much higher temperatures than whole butter can: The water content in whole butter puts an upper limit on the temperature it can achieve ([f 212]) until it’s cooked off, and raising the temperature beyond that point can make the milk solids burn and turn bitter.While making clarified butter is as simple as heating butter until its water evaporates, using precision temperature control makes the process consistent and entirely hands off. It also allows you to control the degree to which the milk solids brown. Increase the cook temperature on clarified butter for a few minutes, and the milk solids will become lightly browned, lending the liquid fat toasty notes—this is, essentially, ghee, the clarified butter commonly used in cooking in the Indian Subcontinent. Increase the temperature a bit more for a few minutes, and you’ll have darkly browned butter, which is darker in color and has an even more pronounced toasty flavor and aroma.

Precision Clarified Butter