When it goes wrong · Clarify
The stock went cloudy again after the raft.
Can you save it?
Reviewed for this symptom
Let it settle off the heat and draw the clearest liquid from below the surface with a ladle; if that is not enough, clarify again with a fresh raft and accept a little flavour loss.
How to confirm the diagnosis
Observable cues, not inferred user state
- It was clear and then clouded
- It was stirred or reached a boil after the raft set
- Bits of raft dispersed through the liquid
Not this?
What actually happened
Only this symptom
It was stirred or boiled after the raft formed. Any agitation breaks the raft and puts the particles straight back in.
The full mechanism
Shared by every clarify failure
Two quite different operations share the name. Clarifying butter means separating its three components — butter is roughly 80% fat, 16% water and 4% milk solids — by melting it gently so they stratify, then keeping only the fat. Those milk solids are proteins and sugars, and they are what burns at around 150°C, so removing them raises the usable temperature to well above 200°C. That is the entire reason to do it. Clarifying a stock is a different mechanism: fine particles stay suspended because they are too small to settle, so an egg-white raft is used to trap them — the albumen coagulates as the liquid warms and forms a mesh that catches the particles as it rises. Straining alone removes what is large; only the raft removes what is colloidal. For a starchy liquid like horchata, the job is simply mechanical filtration, done twice.
The full Clarify lesson — how to tell, where to practise it, what it carries to.
Next time
Prevent this specific failure
Once the raft forms, never stir and never boil — a bare simmer and a ladle through the opening in the raft.
What right looks like
Shared by every clarify failure
- Melted butter separates into three visible layers within a few minutes of gentle heat, with white foam on top and milky sediment below.
- The clarified fat is transparent gold — if it is cloudy, solids are still in it.
- A stock raft rises and sets into a grey crust with a clear opening; the liquid drawn from beneath it runs clear.
- A double-strained starchy liquid feels silky rather than gritty at the back of the throat.