Clarified Butter substitute

Best substitute

Ghee

Use the same amount as the clarified butter you are replacing

Best for searing

Close match

Ghee is the same thing and swaps 1:1, just cooked a little longer so it tastes nuttier. If you have neither, use a neutral oil for high-heat cooking, or half butter and half oil if you want some butter flavour and better browning. For drawn butter, the melted butter you dip lobster, crab or artichokes in, simply melt butter and spoon the white foam off the top. Honestly though, making clarified butter takes ten minutes and one stick of butter, and that is usually the right answer.

Other clarified butter substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Homemade clarified butter
Close match
1 stick (4 oz) of butter yields about 6 tbsp clarified
Melt unsalted butter over the lowest heat without stirring, skim off the white foam, then pour off the clear golden fat and leave the milky sediment behind.
What changes
Best for
everything clarified butter is used for
Identical to what you would buy, takes about ten minutes, and costs the price of butter. Use unsalted, because salt concentrates into the smaller volume of fat left behind and you lose all control of seasoning. Keeps for months in a sealed jar.
3Butter and neutral oil, half and half
Close match
Use the same amount for the total fat
Add butter and oil to the pan together.
What changes
The oil buffers the milk solids so they brown instead of scorching.
Best for
searing steak, pan-frying fish and chicken, sauteing, browning mushrooms
Gives you real butter flavour with much better heat tolerance than butter alone, and the browning is arguably better than with clarified butter because the milk solids are still there to brown. The pan will speckle, and at very high heat those speckles turn bitter, so it is not a substitute for a hard sear.
4Neutral oil (grapeseed, canola, refined sunflower)
Different taste
Use the same amount
Straight swap for the fat, with no butter flavour at all.
What changes
Best for
high-heat searing, deep frying, hash browns, stir-frying, shallow frying
Handles the heat perfectly and browns food beautifully, which is really all clarified butter was doing in a hot pan. What it contributes is nothing, flavour-wise, so if the butter taste mattered add a knob of cold butter at the very end with the heat off. This is the most reliable swap for anything above a medium-high heat.
5Duck fat
Different taste
Use the same amount
Rendered duck fat, sold in tubs and jars, with a smoke point well above whole butter.
What changes
Best for
roast potatoes, searing meat, confit, sauteing greens, frying eggs
Savoury and rich where butter is sweet and creamy, and outstanding for potatoes and browning meat. Completely wrong for anything sweet, and wrong for drawn butter with seafood, where the point is clean dairy richness. Also worth knowing: olive oil works fine here too, with its own peppery flavour.
6Melted butter with the foam skimmed off, for drawn butter only
Close match
Use the same amount
For a dipping bowl at the table rather than for cooking: melt butter gently and spoon the foam off the surface.
What changes
Best for
lobster, crab, steamed artichokes, corn on the cob, steamed clams
Not fully clarified, so it will separate into a watery layer as it sits and it cannot take heat. For the first ten minutes in a warm bowl on the table it is indistinguishable from properly clarified butter. Keep it warm rather than hot, and stir it once before serving if it has stood.

What is Clarified Butter?

Clarified Butter is butter that has been melted so the water and milk solids can be skimmed and poured away, also called beurre clarifie, leaving pure golden butterfat that carries butter flavour but takes roughly 450F without the milk solids scorching, which is why recipes call for it in a hard sear or a dipping bowl.

Cooking tips

The whole point of clarifying is removing water and milk proteins. Those milk solids are what burn at around 300F; the same butterfat with them removed is happy up to roughly 450F, which is why clarified butter can sear and plain butter smokes.
To make it: melt a stick of unsalted butter over the lowest heat, do not stir, skim the foam off the top, then pour the clear golden layer into a jar and stop before the milky bottom layer. You get about 6 tablespoons from 8.
Clarified butter keeps for months in a sealed jar, because there is no water or milk protein left for bacteria to work on. It does not strictly need the fridge, though refrigerating extends it further.
Clarified butter and ghee are the same technique with different endpoints. Ghee is cooked until the milk solids toast, so it tastes of hazelnut. Use ghee where you want that, and clarified butter where you want clean neutral butter flavour, such as a beurre blanc or a pale sauce.
Never clarify salted butter for cooking. You are concentrating the butter into about three-quarters of its original volume, and the salt comes along, so the finished fat is unpredictably salty and hard to season around.

Frequently asked questions

Is ghee the same as clarified butter?

Nearly. Ghee is clarified butter cooked further so that the milk solids toast before straining, which gives it a nutty, slightly caramel flavour and a deeper colour. They are interchangeable 1:1 in almost every recipe, and ghee is the single best substitute for clarified butter.

Can I just use regular butter instead?

For low and medium heat, yes, 1:1, and it will simply brown faster than clarified butter would. For a high-heat sear, no: the milk solids blacken and turn bitter well before the pan is hot enough, and the food will taste burnt rather than browned.

Can I leave the clarified butter out?

Only if something else greases the pan, so in practice no. Fat is doing real work here, conducting heat and preventing sticking. Use a neutral oil at the same quantity and, if the butter flavour mattered, add a knob of cold butter off the heat at the end.

How much clarified butter does a stick of butter make?

About three-quarters of the volume you started with, so roughly 6 tablespoons of clarified butter from 8 tablespoons of butter. The rest is water that evaporates and milk solids you discard. Budget accordingly if a recipe specifies a cup of clarified butter.

What is the smoke point of clarified butter compared with butter?

Clarified butter and ghee sit somewhere around 450F, while whole butter starts smoking closer to 300F. That gap is entirely down to the milk solids, and it is the reason clarified butter exists as an ingredient at all.

Related substitutes

More oils & fats substitutes

Clarified Butter substitute

Other clarified butter substitutes

2Homemade clarified butter

3Butter and neutral oil, half and half

4Neutral oil (grapeseed, canola, refined sunflower)

5Duck fat

6Melted butter with the foam skimmed off, for drawn butter only