Clarified Butter and Ghee: What Removing Milk Solids Actually Does
BeginnerQuick Answer
Clarified butter is regular butter with the water and milk solids removed, leaving behind nearly pure butterfat. Ghee is clarified butter taken one step further — the milk solids are browned before straining, giving it a nuttier, more complex flavor. Both have a smoke point around 450-490°F, far higher than regular butter's 300-350°F.
The Science
Butter keeps burning in your sauté pan before the food even has a chance to brown. You’ve seen it: the butter goes from melted to golden to dark brown to acrid and black in what feels like 30 seconds. The food picks up that bitter charred taste.
The problem isn’t the butter fat. It’s everything else in the butter.
What’s Actually in Butter
Regular butter is approximately 80-82% fat, 16-18% water, and 2-4% milk solids. Those milk solids are primarily casein (milk protein) and lactose (milk sugar).
The fat is stable at high temperatures. Butterfat doesn’t burn until around 450-490°F under most conditions. That’s plenty of heat for searing.
The milk solids are the problem. Casein proteins begin to denature and brown around 250-300°F (the same Maillard reactions that make bread and meat brown). At higher temperatures they burn outright. Lactose caramelizes and then chars. These components burn well below the temperatures needed for effective searing.
Every time butter smokes in your pan, it’s the milk solids burning, not the fat.
Remove the milk solids, and the smoke point jumps by 150-200°F.
How Clarification Works
Clarifying butter is simple in concept: melt the butter slowly, let the components separate, and remove the milk solids.
When you melt butter gently over low heat, three things separate. The foam that rises to the top is denatured whey proteins and some water. The clear golden liquid in the middle is pure butterfat. The white, milky sediment that sinks to the bottom is casein protein.
Skim the foam. Pour off the clear golden fat through a fine strainer or cheesecloth. Leave the white sediment behind. What remains is clarified butter: nearly pure butterfat with trace amounts of milk solids and very little water.
The yield is about 75-80% of the original butter weight, because you’re discarding water and solids.
Ghee: The Extra Step
Ghee is clarified butter that goes one step further.
After the water evaporates and the milk solids separate, you keep cooking. The solids sink to the bottom and begin to brown. Lactose caramelizes. Casein proteins undergo Maillard reactions. The milk solids go from white to golden to brown, producing dozens of new flavor compounds — the same nutty, complex molecules that make brown butter so much more interesting than plain melted butter.
Then you strain the browned solids out, leaving behind clarified fat with those flavor compounds dissolved in it.
The result is ghee: pure butterfat with a distinctly nuttier, more complex flavor than clarified butter. This is the traditional preparation that’s been used in South Asian cooking for thousands of years, and the same preparation used in French cooking as beurre noisette (brown butter) before straining.
The flavor difference between clarified butter and ghee is the difference between pale stock and deeply reduced stock. Same basic ingredients, very different outcome based on the reactions allowed to occur.
The Smoke Point Change
Regular butter: smoke point around 300-350°F, with significant browning and off-notes starting around 250°F.
Clarified butter: smoke point around 450-490°F.
Ghee: similar to clarified butter, around 450°F, with some variation depending on the specific production method and residual milk solid content.
This difference opens up entirely different cooking applications. With clarified butter or ghee, you can:
- Sear steak in butter at proper searing temperatures without burning
- Make clarified butter-basted chicken with a crispy skin
- Deep fry at moderate temperatures with pure butter flavor
- Cook Indian flatbreads (paratha, chapati) on a very hot griddle with traditional ghee flavor
Anything you’d do with high-smoke-point oil can be done with clarified butter or ghee, but with the added flavor of butterfat.
See Smoke Point for the full context on why smoke point matters and how it relates to oil quality and flavor.
Shelf Stability: Why Ghee Doesn’t Need Refrigeration
Regular butter goes rancid and can harbor bacteria. It needs refrigeration because the water and milk proteins create conditions where bacteria can grow. The casein and lactose are also reactive — oxidation and microbial activity both degrade flavor quickly at room temperature.
Ghee and clarified butter remove both problems.
Water elimination removes the moisture that bacteria need. Protein removal eliminates the primary substrate for microbial growth. What remains is pure fat, which is inhospitable to bacterial growth and oxidizes much more slowly than the original butter.
Traditionally made ghee stored in an airtight container away from light and heat keeps for 1-3 months at room temperature and up to a year refrigerated. This is why ghee was practical in hot climates before refrigeration. In regions of South Asia with ambient temperatures over 100°F, traditional ghee kept for months without spoiling.
Lactose, Casein, and Dairy Sensitivity
People who are lactose intolerant are missing or low in lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose. Since ghee contains virtually no lactose (it was either removed with the solids or converted to other compounds during browning), most lactose-intolerant people tolerate it without issue.
The casein question is more complicated. Most casein is removed during clarification, but trace amounts may remain depending on how carefully the butter was strained. For lactose intolerance alone, ghee is generally fine. For true dairy protein allergy (IgE-mediated), even trace casein can be a problem, and ghee should be avoided or treated with caution.
This is an individual health question. Someone with a true casein allergy should confirm ghee tolerance with their doctor rather than relying on general guidance.
Making ghee at home: what to watch for at each stage
The process has four distinct stages that are easy to identify visually and by smell.
Stage 1: Melting (first 5-10 minutes). Butter melts and begins to foam. The foam is water turning to steam and carrying whey proteins to the surface. The foam looks white and frothy. Don’t stir. Let it rise.
Stage 2: Clarifying (10-20 minutes). The foam thins as water evaporates. The liquid becomes clearer, turning from milky to golden. You can see down through the fat now. The white sediment starts to collect at the bottom. At this stage, you have clarified butter. If you’re making clarified butter (not ghee), strain it now while the sediment is still white and unstained.
Stage 3: Browning (20-30 minutes, varies by pan and heat). If you continue cooking, the water is fully evaporated and the milk solids on the bottom begin to brown. The liquid changes from golden to a deeper amber. You’ll start to smell toasted, nutty notes — this is the Maillard reaction in the milk solids. The foam on top disappears completely.
Stage 4: Done. When the solids are golden to light brown and the liquid is a clear, warm amber, remove from heat immediately. The residual heat will continue browning the solids for another minute or two. Strain through a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth into a clean, dry jar.
The most common mistake: rushing the heat. Medium-low is right. High heat makes the process faster but also makes it easier to overshoot — dark brown solids produce bitter, astringent compounds. Aim for golden, not dark.
Store in a clean, airtight glass jar. A stainless or plastic container works, but glass is easiest to clean and doesn’t retain flavors.
What This Means for You
Use clarified butter or ghee anywhere you want butter flavor at high heat: searing steak, making crispy potatoes, sautéing at temperatures that would burn regular butter. Ghee's nutty flavor makes it better for dishes where you want that added complexity. Clarified butter is more neutral. Both can sit at room temperature for weeks or months because removing the water and proteins eliminates what bacteria need to grow.