Sauteing: Grass fed butter or coconut oil? page

[mwok86]

For sauteing meats like lamb, is grass fed butter (kerry gold) or coconut oil better?

[Lewis]

AFAIK, coconut oil is a little more heat-stable, but both are fairly good. Clarified butter (which you can make or buy—usually under the Indian name ghee/ghi) would be better than ordinary butter for cooking. But so long as the heat's not too high you're OK. Whatever you use, don't allow it to get hot enough to smoke.

Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

[Balance]

I totally agee with Lewis. You can't go wront with coconut oil or a good quality ghee. That is all I use in sauteeing. An even better option than those two in my opinion is some form of rendered animal fat like duck fat, beef tallow, or bacon drippings.

[AndreaReina]

For a true saute (objects in pan in constant motion) butter will do since you typically don't do it to the point where the milk proteins burn. If you really mean pan-fry, then butter is going to burn pretty quickly; in that case use a pure fat like ghee, coconut oil, tallow/lard etc as suggested above.