Ghee is the heart and soul of any Indian recipe – Indian cuisine without ghee is like French food without butter. Seasoning with or simply adding a dollop of ghee to your meal enhances the flavor of foods manifold. Ghee, a form of clarified butter, also has many health benefits according to Ayurveda. Not only that, ghee has a special place in our rituals as well. Not all store-bought ghee has the right flavor, aroma, and shelf-life, and so it’s highly recommended to make your own. Don’t get turned off by the weird smell of melting butter – when you go past the soft sound of boiling butter, the aroma of clarified butter that follows is simply divine. Without further ado, let’s get to melting…

WHAT YOU WILL NEED for GHEE

Ingredients

Note: 1 cup = 235 ml

1. 3 unsalted butter sticks, 250 gms each

Ghee can be prepared with salted butter as well but is not recommended for a couple of reasons. 

a) you will get a mild salty taste when used in sweets

b) salted butter results in more wastage (residue from cooking butter in the bottom of the pan) as compared to unsalted butter 

Kitchen Tools

1. Medium size saucepan
2. Scoop ladle

PREPARATION – GHEE (with step-by-step photos)

Step 1– Set a medium size saucepan on medium to high heat setting. Add 3 butter sticks, 250 gms each and bring it to boil

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Step 2 – When the butter starts to boil, you will hear a crackling sound and it will form a creamy froth which will start to boil over. At this time, you have to reduce the heat to the lowest setting. Use a scoop ladle and quickly scoop and pour back the liquid butter several times until the froth clears and you see transparent bubbles on the top. This basically means the remaining water content has evaporated

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Step 3 – As the moisture dries up, the butter will begin to clarify forming a cloudy yellowish liquid and when you carefully clear the bubbles from the top you will see a vibrant honey gold color liquid. When you scoop it out, it will look like cooking oil. Turn off the heat if it has a honey color. You will notice that the ghee is clear on the top, leaving a dark residue at the bottom of the pan

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If the ghee is undercooked, the retained moisture will make it taste and smell raw, and will further reduce its shelf life

On the other hand, if ghee is overcooked, it will become dark and have a mildly burnt flavor. This will not affect its shelf life, but is obviously not the best in taste 

Step 4 – When you see that beautiful gold color, remove the pan from heat. Transfer it to a storage container before it solidifies again, and allow it to cool

Close with the lid only when it is completely cool 

Step 5 – Enjoy your sublime ghee with your favorite food or use it for cooking and tempering 😋

Ghee stays fresh for months without the need for refrigeration. In fact, moving it to the fridge and back will reintroduce moisture and spoil it

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A spoonful of ghee on steaming hot rice is a sublime delicacy! Anyone can make it, all you have to do is heat butter and within minutes you will have ghee.  So, why all the fuss about being unable to make it at home? I grew up relishing homemade fresh nei (ghee in Tamil). Our milkman used to literally bring his buffalo to our doorstep and milk it in front of our eyes to ensure there was no adulteration and we gladly paid a higher price than the market for this fresh milk. My mother would diligently save the milk skin from milk that cooled off after boiling. She would combine this with cream from the top of yogurt. This fatty mixture when churned using a hand held whisk yielded the best butter. After she worked through it patiently fresh butter would float to the top, which was the moment my sisters and I would wait for. I still remember how we hovered around her to get our share before it was used to make ghee.

Nowadays, with changing times and lifestyle nobody has the time for that anymore – certainly not me. I have moved on to buying grass-fed / organic butter and using it to make ghee. Since I had to sacrifice on getting fresh milk, the challenge was to then figure out the best butter for the process. That quest for the best was a very interesting journey. My husband and I procured all the popular butter brands from three neighborhood stores in the US (Costco, Whole Foods, and another local favorite – HEB) and pitted them against each other in a competition to see which one turned out the best ghee – taste, smell, and color. We enlisted the help of our kids and did a blind study where each of us ranked our favorites.

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Long story short, after making several jars of ghee, Kerrygold’s Pure Irish Butter (grass fed, unsalted) emerged as the winner (followed, a bit to our surprise, by Costco’s Kirkland unsalted butter and then a close fight among Land O’ Lakes, President, and Whole Foods Organics brand). If you’re like us, have some fun experimenting with the butter you like best – because ghee does deserve that kind of attention. It is the one item in this whole website that truly brings out the ‘Sublime’ in ‘Recipes’ whenever it is used.

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