I tried Martha Stewart’s hack for making ‘the best scrambled eggs in the whole world,’ and they were deliciously creamy

Martha Stewart loves making her scrambled eggs with clarified butter.

During a cooking demo at the “Food & 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. 

She had been making lobsters the day before and decided that the clarified butter would be perfect with her scrambled eggs. 

“Usually, scrambled eggs are overdone or not so tasty,” she told the crowd during the September 2021 event. “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.” Who could pass that up? 

It was time to put Stewart’s egg hack through the ultimate taste test. 

But wait a second, what actually is clarified butter?

“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.”  

“It will not burn as easily as regular butter because it has none of those milk solids, so it won’t even brown,” she adds, noting that clarified butter is a “very clear, golden liquid” with a higher smoking point. 

You can even 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 the purpose of this experiment.

You only need two ingredients to try Stewart’s scrambled eggs hack.

You’ll need some eggs, obviously, as well as some butter. 

Stewart said Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter clarifies nicely, so I grabbed some from my local grocery store before I started cooking. 

Then, it was time to get clarifying.

During her “Food & Wine” demo, Stewart described how to clarify butter in some very simple terms: “You pour off the melted butter, the butter fat, 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. 

Clarifying butter was super easy, although it took longer than I anticipated.

Making clarified butter definitely requires some patience. Twenty minutes passed before I started seeing those foamy milk solids and could skim them off the top of the butter. 

Once it was ready, I carefully transferred the clarified butter into a separate container.

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. 

I should note that, in hindsight, a glass wasn’t the best way to store clarified butter. I had plenty left over after making my scrambled eggs, so I’d recommend throwing your butter in a jar or Tupperware instead. 

It was time to put Stewart’s hack to the test.

First, I cracked two eggs into a small bowl, sprinkled some salt on top, and gave them a quick whisk. 

I added some of the clarified butter to my pan.

I turned my stove to low heat and waited for the butter to warm up.

Then, I followed Stewart’s easy technique for cooking scrambled eggs.

In another “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” clip, the lifestyle expert gives her top tips for cooking the perfect scrambled eggs. 

Per her advice, I first checked if the butter was warm enough by sprinkling a few drops of water on top. Stewart says that 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.” 

In less than two minutes, my scrambled eggs were ready.

They looked gorgeously fluffy and golden in the pan. 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 super silky, rich, and creamy, with a texture akin to the delicious 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. 

But this wouldn’t be a true experiment without a little comparison, so I made another pan of scrambled eggs without using clarified butter.

This was the first time I had 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.

When I compared the scrambled eggs side by side, the ones made with clarified butter were a little silkier and fluffier.

Was there a massive difference between the two? To be honest, not really. They were both delicious, with the clarified-butter scramble tasting just a tad more flavorful and elevated. 

So, will I make clarified butter every week for my eggs? Nah, 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 on low heat is really the key to getting a plate of super fluffy scrambled eggs. But if you’ve got some clarified butter lying around or have time to whip up a batch, it’ll make for a delicious breakfast.