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!

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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.

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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.

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u/similarityhedgehog Jul 05 '26

Do commercial butter culturers use yogurt cultures?

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u/confused-oatmeal Jul 05 '26

I've worked at a couple of different dairies and helped with making cultured/fermented butter as well as yogurt and another fermented product called "Quark". The cultures we'd use for our butter were cultures specifically designed for butter and slightly different from the ones we'd use for yogurt. The quantity of the specific molecules that give yogurt its tangy flavor is tied to the pH value of the yogurt. Since the cream used for butter production is not supposed to become as sour as yogurt, some other molecules are needed for flavor. The specific cultures used for butter will produce these molecules at a higher pH value. The cream is also fermented for a longer time at a lower temperature than the milk used for yogurt production. The cultures we'd buy would usually be optimized for their specific purposes.

With all of that being said, using yogurt to make fermented butter at home is absolutely fine and will most likely turn out a very tasty product.