Martha Stewart has never led me astray.
I learn something new every time I interview the lifestyle icon, like how to make the perfect rice or one-pan pasta.
But Stewart’s best tip was also her most surprising. I was shocked when she told me she often makes scrambled eggs with the same machine that whips up her coffee.
I put Stewart’s hack to the test and made some of the fluffiest eggs I’ve ever tasted. So when I heard she had another technique for making the best scrambled eggs, I knew I had to try it.
Martha Stewart loves making scrambled eggs with clarified butter.
During a cooking demo at the 2021 Food and Wine Classic in Aspen, Stewart revealed that she got the idea for her egg hack after finding a pan of leftover clarified butter in the fridge.
“Usually, scrambled eggs are overdone or not so tasty,” she told the crowd. “I cooked the eggs in the clarified butter, and they looked like golden, beautiful scrambled eggs.”
I had never made clarified butter before, but Stewart said it created “the best scrambled eggs in the whole world.” That was all I needed to hear!
You only need two ingredients to make Stewart’s scrambled eggs.
“Clarified butter is unsalted butter that has been melted and separated from any of the whey or milk solids that are found in butter,” Stewart explained on an episode of her former PBS show, “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School.”
You can buy ghee — clarified butter that has been cooked for longer — at the supermarket. But since Stewart made her own, I decided to do the same for this taste test.
Stewart said Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter clarifies nicely, so I grabbed a box from my local grocery store.
Then it was time to get clarifying.
During her Food and Wine demo, Stewart described how to clarify butter in some very simple terms: “You pour off the melted butter, the butterfat, and that’s your clarified butter.”
Since I wasn’t familiar with the process before this experiment, I got a little more clarification with the help of this step-by-step article from Culinary Hill.
“Melt the butter over low heat,” author Meggan Hill writes. “If the butter boils, the milk solids get dispersed throughout the fat, and you won’t be able to skim them off.”
“Skim off the foamy milk solids that rose to the top,” she continues. “What you’re left with is pure butterfat.”
Sounds easy enough! So, I added knobs of butter to a small saucepan, turned the stove to low heat, and waited for the magic to happen.
Making clarified butter requires some patience.
Twenty minutes passed before I started seeing those foamy milk solids and could skim them off the top of the butter.
I carefully transferred the clarified butter once it was ready.
You can’t just dump all the butter into a cup or jar once you’ve removed the milk solids on top. Clarified butter also has a bottom layer, which is the released water and more milk solids.
So, I used a ladle to transfer the clarified butter to a glass. It was a bright, gorgeous color that looked like pure liquid gold.
In hindsight, a glass wasn’t the best way to store the clarified butter. I had plenty left over after making my scrambled eggs, so I’d recommend putting your butter in a jar or Tupperware instead.
It was time to make some eggs!
First, I cracked two eggs into a small bowl, sprinkled some salt on top, and gave them a quick whisk.
Then I added a spoonful of the clarified butter to my pan. I turned the stove to low heat and waited for the butter to warm up.
Stewart has an easy technique for cooking scrambled eggs.
In another “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” clip, the lifestyle expert gives her tips for cooking the best scrambled eggs.
Per her advice, I first checked if the butter was warm enough by sprinkling a few drops of water on top. If the water sizzles, the pan is ready. Then I added my eggs to the pan and continuously moved them around with a rubber spatula.
“You want the eggs to cook and set, but you don’t want them to brown or get too hard,” Stewart says in the clip. “So just stir around.”
After two minutes in the pan, my scrambled eggs were ready.
They looked gorgeously fluffy and golden. I couldn’t wait to see how they tasted with the clarified butter.
I spread my scrambled eggs on a slice of sourdough and dug in.
These scrambled eggs were absolutely delicious. They were silky, rich, and creamy, with a texture akin to the eggs I made with crème fraîche for Gordon Ramsay’s breakfast sandwich.
My family tried the eggs as well and were big fans. My mom loved how “fresh and fluffy” they tasted, while my sister said the clarified butter added more depth of flavor.
This wouldn’t be a true experiment without a comparison, so I also made a pan of scrambled eggs without clarified butter.
This was the first time I made scrambled eggs with Kerrygold, which has a higher butterfat content than most US brands.
So, were my scrambled eggs extra creamy because the butter was clarified, or simply because the butter was higher in fat? Let’s find out.
After warming the butter, I once again added some eggs to the pan.
I didn’t see a huge difference in appearance compared to the eggs with clarified butter, but I knew it’d really come down to the taste.
The eggs made with clarified butter tasted a little silkier and fluffier, but there wasn’t a huge difference.
I won’t be making clarified butter every week for my eggs, but I also don’t need to — it can last for months in the fridge. Plus, you can use clarified butter for a number of things. My family finished our batch in a week, trying it on everything from branzino to the eggs on Ina Garten’s avocado toast.
I think using a brand with higher butterfat, like Kerrygold, and cooking over low heat is really the key to getting a plate of super fluffy scrambled eggs. But if you happen to have some clarified butter or have time to whip up a batch, it will definitely make for a delicious breakfast.
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