butter is not the ideal medium for searing food—it
simply can’t get hot enough without burning. For
this reason, many chefs make clarified butter, butter
from which the water and protein have been
removed. It’s the primary cooking fat in India,
where it’s known as ghee. You make it by melting
butter, carefully skimming the white milk proteins
off the top, and then pouring off the golden liquid fat,
discarding the watery layer of proteins on the
bottom. Once clarified, butter can be heated to much
higher temperatures without fear of burning.
As I mentioned earlier, clarified butter is used to
make a classic hollandaise, the thinking being that
the water constituent in whole butter will dilute the
sauce. A much easier way to avoid this water in your
finished sauce is to just pour the melted butter slowly
out of the pan until all that’s left is the watery layer
at the bottom, which you can then discard.To test the theory, I heated up a couple of sticks of butter
on the stovetop (the microwave also does just fine) to
200°F, then slowly drizzled the butter into my egg yolks and
lemon juice, which I had running in the blender (adding a
bit of water to the yolk mixture helps prevent it from
sticking to the walls of the jar). A quick dash of salt and
cayenne pepper, and there it was: perfect hollandaise
without the headache. To make it even more foolproof, I
tried it again using an immersion blender and its jar. I put
the egg yolks, lemon, and water in the jar, stuck the wand of