Butter is great for general cooking but not frying. What is burning is the milk solids still left in the butter. Browning butter (basically lightly frying the milk solids) is a process that can be used to impart at different flavor to the butter.
If you want to fry with that buttery flavor but don’t want to burn it, you need to clarify it first: boil out the remaining water content, skim the milk solids off the top, then pour the clear fat off the other milk solids that settle out. Or you can just use ghee, which is basically preclarified butter.
Fun fact: it’s the milk solids that go off first in butter (and the water content allows microbial growth). “Potting” is a preservation technique like “canning”, except instead of sealing something with a metal lid, you pour clarified butter over the food. It fills in gaps between solid pieces and forms a cap on top as it cools.
Depending on what you’re cooking, that is a desirable feature – well, riding right on that threshold.
Note that burnt butter is distinctly bad for your health. All those complex proteins and fats all getting thrown through the chemical grinder… But damn is it tasty to fry a perogy in almost burnt butter compared to any of the oils in that chart…
Whats the smoke point of butter? It always seems to burn when i cook with it.
Butter is great for general cooking but not frying. What is burning is the milk solids still left in the butter. Browning butter (basically lightly frying the milk solids) is a process that can be used to impart at different flavor to the butter.
If you want to fry with that buttery flavor but don’t want to burn it, you need to clarify it first: boil out the remaining water content, skim the milk solids off the top, then pour the clear fat off the other milk solids that settle out. Or you can just use ghee, which is basically preclarified butter.
Fun fact: it’s the milk solids that go off first in butter (and the water content allows microbial growth). “Potting” is a preservation technique like “canning”, except instead of sealing something with a metal lid, you pour clarified butter over the food. It fills in gaps between solid pieces and forms a cap on top as it cools.
I feel like I gained eldritch knowledge. I’m buying ghee and going back to frying everything in it.
Depending on what you’re cooking, that is a desirable feature – well, riding right on that threshold.
Note that burnt butter is distinctly bad for your health. All those complex proteins and fats all getting thrown through the chemical grinder… But damn is it tasty to fry a perogy in almost burnt butter compared to any of the oils in that chart…