Tired of watching your butter burn? Eat and cook healthy with clarified butter and rediscover butter's true taste.

To clarify butter, first melt unsalted butter slowly in a pan. Simmer over low heat, without stirring, until the milk solids have separated and sink to the bottom. Other impurities will rise to the surface, while the butterfat in the middle layer will become very clear. Remove the pan from the heat and skim off the foam with a spoon. Then, carefully ladle the clarified butterfat into a separate container. Be careful to leave the solids behind.

While clarified butter doesn't have as much flavor as whole butter, it does have a higher smoke point - making it useful for sautéing - because the milk solids, which scorch easily, have been removed.

Also, without milk solids butter won't spoil as quickly. In the days before refrigeration, cooks in India perfected a special clarifying process that significantly prolongs butter's freshness. This highly clarified butter is called ghee.

Did you know? Butter in the package has a composition close to 80.0% milk fat, 1.2-1.5% salt, 17.5-17.8% water, and 1% milk solids. If butter is salt-free, the moisture and fat contents are adjusted to a slightly higher value to compensate.