Every culture seems to have its ghee. This is smen, clarified and fermented butter from Morocco. It gives a flavor to all your food.
Smen, made from goat butter, is becoming rare in Moroccan kitchens. (And so is eating locusts!) Vegetable oils, so conveniently poured out of a bottle, are the preferred cooking fat of modern cooks.
But as it is with our sourdough, so it is with fermented butter. The essences of all good things develop at their own pace.
Middle-Eastern fermented butter is sometimes packed away and buried in the ground for years, the flavor becoming stronger with the passage of time. In traditional households, the older the smen is, the more highly prized.Old recipes call for kneading fresh butter with oregano – a highly anti-microbial herb that you can read about in our ABCs of medicinal culinary herbs, and salt.
(We’ve written about the surprising properties of salt in this post.) Once treated that way and then buried in a nice cool cache, far from heat and light, no wonder the butter stays edible. The color, though, changes from that appetizing light yellow to quite a dark brown. The odor and taste are that of aged cheese.
There are different recipes for smen. Some like to cook it gently like ghee, then salt it and put it away for a month in a cool, dark place. In Yemen, the butter is gently cooked that way, spiced with fenugreek while still liquid, and called samanah.
Not being fond of fenugreek, I prefer the Moroccan version where the butter isn’t cooked but kneaded together with cooled oregano tea and then set aside to mature.
I admit I’ve never eaten smen taken out of a buried crock, but do enjoy it fresh, in cooking and just lightly spread on warm bread.
More tasty ideas for your table on Green Prophet:
Author: Miriam Kresh
Miriam Kresh is an American ex-pat living in Israel. Her love of Middle Eastern food evolved from close friendships with enthusiastic Moroccan, Tunisian and Turkish home cooks. She owns too many cookbooks and is always planning the next meal. Miriam can be reached at miriam (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
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