Ghee: A Little Butter For A Lot Of Butter Flavor
Nobody wants to actively think about it, but there is a lot of butter involved in making restaurant food delicious. Don't act like I just spilled the beans on some great secret of the fine dining world, it's not cheating, it's French. Everything gets butter at the beginning and the end. But I did find a trick to amplifying what I believe to be the point of using butter over oil — flavor — while cutting the amount used in half. I've been buttering things, man.
That which makes butter cloudy instead of clear or translucent, milk solids, also clouds the buttery flavor. You'll get sweet, greasy and milky over pure butter goodness. That's why I started adding small amounts of clarified butter, or ghee, to ordinary foods. Many supermarkets carry it in the ethnic section, all Indian markets carry it in all their ethnic sections. Here's a few things I like to do with it:
- Fry a sandwich in it. It will look all shiny, crisp and melty just like you wanted, but feel significantly less so and taste significantly more so. Try this smoky jalapeño guy out.
- Add it to any and all pasta, even if it's just topped with tomato sauce. Suddenly a light sauce is rich without the heaviness.
- Mix it with hot sauce and hardcore butter Buffalo ANYTHING. Half the pleasure of eating Buffalo-anything is the tangy burn. The other half, and you might not know this, is the butter. Try this devilish bottle on for size.
- Contrary to what fruit may have you believe, few things make brie pop like butter. That's why the French typically butter baguette slices before slathering with cheese. Try it on a sandwich.
And now, onto a long weekend of grilling, which uses (almost) no butter. This stuff is nice on a steak, though.
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