Clarified butter is simply butter that has been cooked to remove any water and solids. Besides making the kitchen smell amazing, turning butter to clarified butter also gives the fat a higher smoke point (this just means you can cook with it at high temperatures) and lengthens the shelf life of the resulting fat.

Use clarified butter for frying and sautéing — it is excellent for cooking eggs, popping popcorn or cooking steak. Clarified butter also makes a mean hollandaise.

Ghee is clarified butter cooked further to nutty golden perfection. It’s basically an extreme version of clarified butter with a shelf life like uranium.

This recipe first appeared on altonbrown.com.