The Difference Between Butter, Ghee and Margarine in Cooking

Choosing between the three is not just a matter of taste — each behaves entirely differently on heat and in dough, and swapping them at random ruins whole recipes.

Butter: fat, water and protein

Butter is made by churning cream until the fat separates. Its composition: 80% fat, 16% water, and 4% milk protein and salts.

Those three determine how it behaves:

• The fat gives flavour and texture.
• The water turns to steam in the oven — and that is what lifts laminated pastries like croissants and puff pastry.
• The protein browns quickly — which gives brown butter its nutty taste, but it is also what burns at 150°C.

Ghee: butter with everything removed

Ghee is butter heated until the water has evaporated and the protein has settled out and been removed. What remains is almost pure fat.

The result:

• A smoke point of 250°C instead of 150 — so it works for frying and high-heat searing.
• A longer life — it keeps for months out of the fridge, because the water that causes spoilage is gone.
• A deeper nutty flavour from the toasting that happens during clarification.
• Practically no lactose — so it suits people with a mild intolerance.

But it is not a substitute for butter in laminated pastry, because the water that lifts the layers is not there.

Margarine: an imitation vegetable fat

Margarine is vegetable oil processed to be solid at room temperature, with emulsifiers, flavourings and colour.

Its fat content ranges from 35% to 80% depending on the type — and that difference matters enormously:

• Baking margarine (75-80% fat): closest to butter and works in baking.
• Spreading margarine (35-60%): very high in water. In baking it gives a sticky dough and a flat result — this is for spreading on bread only.

And an important health note: older margarine contained harmful trans fats. Most modern products are free of them, but it is worth reading the label.

A usage table

• Deep frying: ghee ✓ · butter ✗ (it burns) · margarine ✗
• Searing over high heat: ghee ✓ · butter + a spoonful of oil ✓ · margarine ✗
• Sautéing over medium heat: all three work
• Cake and cookies: butter ✓ · 80% margarine ✓ · ghee ~ (a different flavour)
• Laminated pastry: cold butter only ✓✓
• Sauces: butter ✓ (it emulsifies and gives gloss)
• Rice and stuffed vegetables: ghee ✓✓ (the traditional flavour)

Why butter burns and ghee does not

What burns is not the fat — it is the milk protein. The protein begins browning at 120°C and blackens at 150, giving a bitter taste.

Ghee has had that protein removed, so the pure fat withstands up to 250.

The classic trick: butter plus a spoonful of oil in the pan. The oil raises the effective smoke point of the mixture while the butter gives the flavour. Not a complete substitute, but it widens the margin considerably.

Substituting between them in recipes

Butter → ghee: use 80% of the quantity (because ghee is pure fat) and add the missing water if the recipe is a bake. So 100 g of butter = 80 g of ghee + 20 ml of water.

Ghee → butter: increase by 25% and reduce any other liquid in the recipe.

Butter → margarine: 1:1 if the margarine is 80% fat. If it is less, the result will differ and the bake will be flat and soft.

Butter → oil: 80% of the quantity by weight. But the texture changes — oil is liquid at room temperature so the bake is softer and less short, and cookies spread more.

Salted and unsalted butter

The difference is roughly a teaspoon of salt per 225 g.

Professional recipes use unsalted so they can control the salt themselves — salt levels vary between brands, and in baking that difference shows.

If all you have is salted: reduce the recipe's salt by half a teaspoon per 225 g of butter.

Brown butter: a technique worth learning

Brown butter (beurre noisette) is butter heated until the milk protein browns — not burns.

The method: butter in a light-coloured pan over medium heat. It melts, then foams, then the foam subsides and you see brown specks at the bottom and smell a nutty aroma. Take it off immediately — the line between brown and burnt is seconds.

And it adds clear depth to anything: cookies, cake, pasta, roasted vegetables and even eggs.

Fat in dough: why it matters

Fat in baking does something called shortening — it coats the flour particles so the proteins cannot link into long gluten strands.

The result is a short, crumbly texture instead of a chewy one. Which is why:

• Biscuits and ghorayeba contain a great deal of fat — the wanted texture melts in the mouth.
• Bread contains little or no fat — you want strong gluten to hold the gas.
• Solid fat (cold butter) gives layers, and liquid fat (oil) gives a uniform soft texture.

Storage

• Butter: a month in the fridge and 6 months in the freezer. And it absorbs smells, so it must be wrapped.
• Ghee: 3 months out of the fridge in a sealed jar, and a year in the fridge.
• Margarine: by the date on the tub, and always in the fridge.