Butter'em Up

The other day I was in line at a supermarket's seafood department endeavoring to buy shrimp, when the guy after me cut in line and ordered king crab legs. As the clerk was bagging the legs the guy asked him "How do I make the butter for these?"

I'm sure he was referring to the classic drawn butter commonly served with shellfish. The clerk retorted: "Just melt the butter." And with that tidbit of erroneous information he was on his way and I proceeded to purchase my shrimp.

Had his adherence to proper line etiquette been more commendable, I would have intervened and informed him of the proper method of preparing the butter for his Alaskan delicacy.

Drawn butter is clarified butter. But before we can define clarified butter, we must first understand regular butter. Butter is the semisolid material that results from churning cream.

In the US it must be at least 80% milk fat. The remaining 20% is water and milk solids, (proteins and salts). It may be salted or unsalted. The salt, which acts as a preservative, allows for salted butter to last up to a month in your fridge as opposed to two weeks for unsalted butter.

Clarified butter is unsalted butter that has been heated to the point that its water evaporates and the milk solids separate out. The resulting golden fluid is the clarified butter, i.e., pure butter fat.

One pound of butter will yield about 12 ounces of clarified butter. To clarify your butter, heat it on low. Some of the proteins will coagulate and produce a foam on the surface which must be skimmed off.

Continue to cook until the butter becomes clear and the remaining milk solids congregate on the bottom. Then either ladle or pour out the butter being careful not to include the milk solids.

If you "just melt the butter" and fail to remove the milk solids, you will have just that: melted butter, not drawn or clarified butter.

• page 1 of 2
• next page