DEAR DAME EVELYN, What is the deal with clarified butter? It's all I hear people talking about – clarified butter this, clarified butter that, clarified butter the other. What is clarified butter, exactly, where can I get it, how should I use it, and do I even need it? I feel out of the loop. Please clarify.

Loopy

Buttercup, You move in rarefied, or perhaps I should say clarified, circles if the conversation all about you concerns clarified butter. Dame Evelyn should be so lucky, clarified butter not being a topic I should have thought an everyday one. Still, one supposes that people do talk about everything sooner or later, so clarified butter's number was bound to come up at some point. As it has now done. As to your wreath of questions: Clarified butter is simply butterfat with the milk solids removed. The advantage of this is that, because milk solids burn at a lower temperature than the butterfat, removing them means the butterfat can be used for high-heat cooking methods, such as sautéing.

Dame Evelyn does sometimes see clarified butter for sale in markets, but she sails on, because on those rare occasions when clarified butter is called for, she simply makes her own. She does this by putting a stick or two of sweet (i.e., unsalted) butter in a small saucepan over low heat and waiting, ever so patiently, until they melt. She notes the white foam that gathers at the surface of the melted butter and the curdlike blobs of white that settle at the bottom of the pan: milk solids. She scoops away the surface foam with a fine strainer, pours the rest into one of those gravy-separating cups, and pours the sunken milk solids out through the spout. You can keep clarified butter for several weeks in the fridge, where it will solidify again, or in the freezer, where it will keep for several months. I hope this is all clear?

Solidly,

E. G.-S.