Is there a way to re-crystallize or temper goat butter?
I received a small tub of goat butter for Christmas, and unfortunately I left it too close to my stove last night, and the whole thing melted. (just the butter, nor the plastic obviously.)
I read that melted butter doesn't solidify correctly because it has a crystalline structure that's broken by the heat.
... Which sounds an awful lot like cocoa butter to me, and I've successfully tempered chocolate (or close enough) by using seed crystals of not-melted cocoa butter until it reaches the correct temperature.
Google is very confused by my question, so I'm reaching out here. Is there a way to temper melted animal butter to return it to its original crystalline structure?
Best Answer
No, you cannot temper it. Chocolate is pretty much the only edible product where tempering is worth it.
"sounds an awful lot like cocoa butter" - only because the explanation you came across was not detailed enough. Cocoa butter is a much simpler case. Only three fatty acids (oleic, stearic and palmitic acid) account for over 95% of its composition, and it so happens that, when cooled under the right conditions, they form a regular lattice with very pleasant sensory properties.
Butter, on the other hand, is not just any old crystalline lattice. It is a complicated emulsion:
The fat globules, solid crystals, and water droplets are embedded in a continuous mass of semisolid “free” fat that coats them all. *
So you start out with the mammal's udder packing fat into globules, which have their own membrane. When the butter is churned, most globules split, and out comes the semisolid fat. The solid fat crystals start clumping into each other, and some of the water comes out of emulsion (=buttermilk, in the original meaning of the word). Then you remove that free water, and you are left with a mix of structurally complicated components. It is not a single regular structure, and there is no mechanism for it to self-order, the way cocoa butter does.
Bottom line, you are left with goat butterfat now. It will never go back to be butter, but as a consolation, it is still perfectly edible.
* McGee On Food and Cooking
Pictures about "Is there a way to re-crystallize or temper goat butter?"
Can you temper butter?
Alternatively you can use a "hot box" to temper the butter where you control the temperature of the storage or tempering.What does tempering butter mean?
Tempering is a term used in cooking when an ingredient\u2014or two\u2014needs to be stabilized, meaning its characteristics remain the same and aren't altered in any way. We see this technique used when combining ingredients that are each at completely different temperatures.Making Goat Butter
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