Chef Juliette
Ordinary or White Consommé
Beef shin, lean beef, and fowl begin in cold water and rise slowly toward a tremble. Skim before the boil, and you learn the quiet discipline that gives every clear French broth its backbone.
Culinary Explorer
A cooking platform built around craft, culture, and the stories behind what we eat.
Clarified Butter
Created by Chef Juliette
Based on No. 175, Clarified Butter, from Le Guide Culinaire (1907) by Auguste Escoffier
Beurre clarifié is butter taught to withstand heat: melt it gently, skim the foam, and decant the clear gold from the milk solids for searing, sautéing, and sauce work.
Sauces & Condiments
French
Make Ahead
Batch Cooking
Meal Prep
5 min
Active Time
20 min cook•35 min total
YieldAbout 1⅔ cups (395 ml / 360 g)
Beurre clarifié (clarified butter) teaches the first principle of butter work: butter contains fat, water, and milk solids, and each behaves differently over heat. Separate them gently and the clear fat can meet the hard heat that whole butter cannot. The one truth before you touch a pan is this: clarification is separation, not browning.
The brigade entry assumes a saucier, a saucepan resting at the side of the fire, and enough service to justify keeping a pound ready at all times. Your home equivalent is a 2-quart saucepan on the smallest burner, a dry spoon, and a sieve lined with muslin or cheesecloth. We keep the book's full pound because it fits an ordinary saucepan and makes a useful jar. Constant readiness is brigade scaffolding and can go; slow separation, careful skimming, and a clean decant are the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.
Don't stir once the butter begins melting. Let the layers find their own places, foam above, clear gold in the middle, milky sediment below, then pour with a steady hand. If a little sediment follows, let the butter settle and pour it again. Ça se rattrape.
Beurre clarifié belongs to the working pantry of the French classical kitchen, especially the saucier and sauté stations, where butter flavor was wanted over heat that would burn whole butter. From there it passed naturally into cuisine bourgeoise for frying, basting, and holding ahead, because removing the water and milk solids makes butter steadier and longer-keeping. It is not beurre noisette: clarified butter remains clear and gently flavored, while beurre noisette deliberately browns the milk solids.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
unsalted butter
Quantity
2 cups (475 ml / 454 g)
cut into 8 pieces
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| unsalted buttercut into 8 pieces | 2 cups (475 ml / 454 g) |
Equipment Needed
- •2-quart (1.9 L) light-colored heavy saucepan
- •Shallow skimming spoon
- •Fine-mesh sieve
- •Clean dry muslin or three layers of cheesecloth
- •2-cup heatproof measuring jug
- •1-pint heatproof storage jar with lid
Instructions
- 1
Prepare dry equipment
Set a clean, completely dry heatproof jug beside the stove. Line a fine-mesh sieve with clean dry muslin or three layers of cheesecloth and place it over the jug. Water makes hot fat spit, so the pan, spoon, sieve, cloth, and storage jar must all be dry.
- 2
Melt without stirring
Put the butter in a heavy 2-quart saucepan, which gives it twice the room it occupies, and place it over the lowest heat. Let it melt undisturbed for 10 to 15 minutes. White foam will gather on top, clear golden fat will form beneath it, and pale milk solids will sink. The surface should foam quietly, not spit. Do not stir, because stirring sends the solids back through the fat just when they are trying to separate.
If the sediment starts coloring, lift the pan from the heat at once and set it on a cool burner. Pale cream solids are fine; brown solids with a nutty aroma mean you have made beurre noisette. Keep it for another use and begin again if neutral beurre clarifié is required. - 3
Skim the foam
As the foam becomes thick enough to lift, skim it gently with a shallow spoon without disturbing the sediment below. Work around the surface rather than digging into the butter. You needn't chase every small white fleck, because the muslin will catch what remains. If you skim away some clear fat with the foam, let the skimmed portion settle in a small cup and return only its clear upper layer to the saucepan.
- 4
Let layers settle
When the butter looks transparent and the bubbling has nearly stopped, remove the pan from the heat and leave it untouched for 5 to 10 minutes. The clear fat should sit distinctly above a milky layer and pale sediment. If the butter remains cloudy because the pan was jostled, rewarm it just until fully fluid and let it settle again. Ça se rattrape.
- 5
Decant and strain
Pour the clear golden butter slowly through the muslin-lined sieve into the heatproof jug. Keep the saucepan tilted gently and stop as soon as the milky liquid approaches the lip; leave that final spoonful behind rather than muddying the whole batch. Do not press the cloth. If sediment slips through, let the strained butter settle for another 10 minutes and decant it through fresh dry muslin into a clean vessel.
- 6
Cool and store
Transfer the beurre clarifié to a clean, dry, room-temperature heatproof jar. Let it cool uncovered until it is only faintly warm, then seal and refrigerate. It will set opaque and pale gold in the cold, then turn clear again when melted. Use a clean dry spoon each time and keep it refrigerated for up to one month, or freeze it for up to six months.
Chef Tips
- •Use unsalted butter. Salt concentrates in the milky layer and makes the separation harder to judge; unsalted butter gives you clean flavor and a clear view of what the heat is doing.
- •A pale, heavy saucepan is useful because you can see the sediment before it begins to color. The pan must hold at least twice the butter's original volume, since the foaming can rise unexpectedly.
- •Beurre clarifié is for sautéing, searing, roasting, and butter sauces that need stable fat. It does not replace whole butter everywhere: the water and milk solids in whole butter still matter when mounting a sauce or building an emulsion. C'est la même grammaire, but a different sentence.
- •Save cleanliness for the jar as carefully as for the saucepan. A wet spoon introduces water, encourages spoilage, and makes the fat spit the next time it meets a hot pan.
Advance Preparation
- •Make the beurre clarifié up to one month ahead and keep it sealed in the refrigerator. Portion it with a clean dry spoon so the main jar stays free of crumbs and moisture.
- •For longer storage, freeze it in small covered portions for up to six months. Thaw only what you need, since repeated warming and cooling invite moisture into the fat.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 14g)
Calories
125 calories
Total Fat
14 g
Saturated Fat
9 g
Trans Fat
1 g
Unsaturated Fat
5 g
Cholesterol
36 mg
Sodium
0 mg
Total Carbohydrates
0 g
Dietary Fiber
0 g
Sugars
0 g
Protein
0 g
Where cooking meets culture.
Culinary guides, cultural storytelling, and the editorial depth that makes cooking meaningful.
Discover Culinary ExplorerMore from Elementary Preparations
Browse the full collection
Chef Juliette
White Veal Stock, and Poultry Stock
Break the veal bones small, then give them eight hours at a bare tremble. This pale, gelatinous fond becomes the quiet foundation beneath velouté, blanquette, and every sauce that must stay light.
Chef Juliette
Oriental Sauce
Sauce Orientale concentrates lobster-rich American Sauce with curry, then folds in cream away from the fire: a glossy, gently spiced derivative made for lobster, crayfish, and firm fish.
Chef Juliette
Poulette Sauce
An old lesson in sauce families: Sauce Allemande takes mushroom liquor, then butter, lemon, and parsley, becoming a glossy Poulette for sheep's trotters, leeks, cauliflower, and anything needing gentle richness with a bright edge.