Clarified butter is superior to regular butter in two salient ways. You can fry with it at a higher cooking temperature, and you can store it longer. These benefits are not won without a sacrifice: Clarified butter lacks most of the characteristic buttery flavor that mainly comes from one of the removed substances, the protein casein.

You can fry with clarified butter at a higher temperature because you raise its smoke point from about 250 to 350 degrees F when you remove the butter's protein, which is the component that scorches first. Clarified butter has a longer storage life because it is primarily the protein in the butter that makes butter vulnerable to spoilage. If it is superclarified, as in the fabled ghee of India, you can store clarified butter at room temperature for months without ill effects.