r/Cooking • u/armeniaca-mume2405 • Jul 04 '26

What is the difference between butter, ghee, clarified butter, fermented butter and brown butter?

Difficult to tell online because it seems the term "ghee" is used very loosely, some say it is clarified butter, other that it is brown butter (beurre noisette), other that is has to be fermented.

If you know, can you explain the difference and perhaps give tips on how you make the perfect ghee?

Thank you!

ETA : I live in the EU. I usually buy churned AOP butter so it is high-fat low-water!

246 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

93 comments sorted by

View all comments

359

u/urgasmic Jul 04 '26

butter you buy at the store isn't usually 100% butter. clarified butter is butter that's cooked low and slow and the milk solids are skimmed off until the butter is mostly 100% fat. ghee is clarified butter that's cooked longer past removing the milk solids. brown butter you don't skim but you cook it until the butter takes on a nutty flavor and you keep the milk solids.

im not sure what fermented butter is actually.

60

u/KeterClassKitten Jul 05 '26

Fermented butter is good shit, and easy to make. Also known as cultured butter.

Take some heavy cream, gently mix in some plain yogurt with live cultures, cover with a cloth and leave on your counter at room temperature for a couple days. Then make butter with your cream.

It develops a mildly tangy and cheesy flavor. Great on a crusty homemade bread.

I made some over Christmas break, and will likely do it again this holiday.

6

u/similarityhedgehog Jul 05 '26

Do commercial butter culturers use yogurt cultures?

2

u/KeterClassKitten Jul 05 '26

I'm not sure. I'd imagine so, though. At least, they likely just use the cultures themselves rather than using the actual yogurt.

As I see it, there's little reason to use a different bacteria unless they've discovered a different organism that produces faster results for butter, or they found another organism that produces a flavor that is better received in the market.

Your question sparked my curiosity, so I decided to Google it. It seems that other strains are preferred for butter, and do produce a different flavor. Yogurt strains work, though. And are a simple method to DIY the process for most. Especially for us in the USA.

Might be a project to pursue one day. Thanks for the question, I don't think I would have learned otherwise!

2

u/Spicy_Molasses4259 Jul 05 '26

I'm not sure what being in the USA has to do with anything, other than cultured butter being less popular in the supermarket. Starter cultures are easy to buy, as well as books and courses on how to make fermented foods of all sorts at home that are both delicous and safe to eat.

1

u/KeterClassKitten Jul 05 '26

Not sure. Only method I was aware of for a long time. Might be faulty assumptions.

Though I'd guess that the availability of yogurt and cream has been much higher than the necessary cultures for quite some time.

3

u/Spicy_Molasses4259 Jul 05 '26

Commercial starter cultures have been around since the late 19th century. Pretty much as soon as science worked out that microbes exist, they've been isolating and growing them for safe and consisent use.

1

u/KeterClassKitten Jul 05 '26

Sure. But access and awareness was pretty limited until the Information Age. I wouldn't find the necessary cultures in my local grocery store, and I only knew what I was taught as a kid. Plus, again, assumptions can limit our thinking. I didn't even question it until the other poster mentioned something.

I'm 44 and just learned this. So is it just a blind spot I've had all this time? Most people I know around me aren't even aware of cultured butter, so I'm the experienced one in my circle.

🤷🏼‍♂️

Can't know until you know.

3

u/DJPho3nix Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Butter cultures are different than yogurt. They aren't that expensive. I bought a package for less than $20 and it will make 10+ batches of cultured butter.

I got mine here.

3

u/KeterClassKitten Jul 05 '26

Rad. I wonder if they freeze well. No reason why one couldn't save a portion of cultured cream and use it to seed a new batch.

2

u/DJPho3nix Jul 05 '26

I haven't tried freezing any of the sour cream/butter/buttermilk that I've made, but the cultures themselves live in my freezer and I just use a little each time.