Ina Garten's Preferred Fat For Cooking Perfect Corn Pancakes
Ina Garten knows how to craft the perfect recipe. With several cookbooks under her belt, she knows all the tips and tricks to create the most delicious recipes that the everyday home cook can make and her Food Network show, "Barefoot Contessa," has been teaching viewers the basics since 2002.
In her "Cook Like a Pro" series, Garten gives professional tips and tricks to viewers for elevating a home-cooked meal to restaurant quality, showing them how to make everything from decadent desserts to vegetables to French cuisine. Garten is well known for her chicken recipes, so it's no surprise that she has several chicken recipes sprinkled throughout the series. Garten also shows viewers some more technical skills that may be commonly practiced by chefs, including how to make homemade vanilla extract and homemade mayonnaise.
In the "Farmstand" episode, Garten gives viewers a peek into a lesser-known fat used for frying.
Ina Garten uses clarified butter for frying
During the "Cook Like a Pro: Farmstand" episode, Ina Garten shows viewers how to create fresh corn pancakes. She stresses the importance of using fresh summer corn for flavor and texture. And when it comes to frying the corn pancakes, Garten uses a unique fat to fry with: She makes her own clarified butter.
Clarified butter, also known as ghee, is butter that has its milk solids removed. This allows the butter to be heated to high temperatures without the risk of it burning. Butter in its unchanged form has a low smoke point because of the milk proteins. The milk proteins give butter its delicious and creamy flavor, but create a problem for high-heat cooking (per Serious Eats).
Garten avoids this problem by using homemade clarified butter. She explains that she makes clarified butter by melting a stick of butter, then letting the white milk solids fall to the bottom. When the solids have separated, she pours out the "golden liquid" and it's ready to use. A few tablespoons of clarified butter is all that is needed to fry the entire batch.