ghee whiz!

O.k., it’s a hard “g” and not much different from what French cooks call beurre clarifié (clarified butter), but where’s the fun in that?

I’ve learned a lot in my foray into Indian cooking.  Besides some incredibly tasty dishes, I’ve learned some of the tricks Indian cooks employ to make their fussy recipes less complicated.  Chief thus far has been that incredible stuff, garlic paste (1), plus pastes of ginger and turmeric.  I never thought ghee was such a big deal.  Isn’t it just what Julia would call clarified butter (2)?   Then I started to make my own and use it, and oh my!  It’s a beautiful cooking fat, stable at room temperature with a smoke point of 482⁰F!  This is well above that of most cooking oils and certainly way beyond what you can expect from butter (350⁰F)(3).   Ghee is prepared at lower temperature than clarified butter, which is brought to a boil in its preparation (4).  This preserves more nutrients.  Indeed, the stuff is a nutritional powerhouse (5).  Much of the lipid (fat) is in the form of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are absorbed far more easily that regular lipids, used medically to supplement patients with GI disorders impairing fat absorption.  While ghee is a milk product, it contains no lactose, good for those intolerants out there.  It’s high in vitamin A, omega-3 fatty acids, butyric acid (which boosts T-cells), and vitamin K2 (good for bones).

The person who taught me about ghee, Madhur Jaffrey, says it’s not widely used by Indian cooks, as dairy products are a luxury in India (at least in the 70s when Madhur write her books) (6).  The stuff was saved for special occasions and religious rituals.  Wikipedia contains a nice delineation of the many rituals for which it is used (7).

But as a white culturally appropriating colonialist, I can use the stuff for whatever I want, right?!  For me, that’s mainly as a cooking fat.  It’s a little too thin to spread on anything.  It congeals a bit at room temperature, but never gets thicker than tomato paste.

But how do you make it?  It’s pretty simple.

Start with a pound of regular butter in a small saucepan on low heat.

The butter will melt to a liquid.  If you have a clear pan like I have, you can see the milk solids settle out.

Then you’ll see some foam forming on the top.  Different butters make different amounts of foam.  The “Challenge” I used last week put up lots of foam, whereas the fancy imported Irish butter I used yesterday – Kerrygold – made almost none.  Meijer had it on sale to where it was about the same price as “regular” butter.  Why not splurge?  Mom swore by Kerrygold.

Once you see big bubbles “blooping” up, you’re done.  Skim off the foam with a spoon and set aside.  The skim isn’t ghee but it’s tasty and you’ll surely find something to dip into it or spread.

Then it’s time to pour the ghee into a jar, through a strainer and some cheesecloth.  Just the clear stuff please, leaving the solids behind in the pan.  

Save the solids, too, as these are especially tasty (my wife’s favorite product of ghee making).  The yield is surprisingly inefficient, as a pound of butter makes about 11 oz of ghee. (my last batch yielded 11.2 oz ghee and 3.9 oz solids and foam).  The yield isn’t unexpected considering most butter sold is 80% or more butterfat (8). The rest is proteinaceous solids (mostly casein) and water. So what you’ve got left is gold.

Here in the tail end of green bean season, we like to blanch our catch, iced down of course, then warm ‘em up in 2-3 T of ghee in the wok.  I don’t think it would go as smoothly with plain butter.  You don’t need an Indian recipe to use the stuff. We go through most of ours with eggs and vegetables.  Go ahead and try it then and try to think how you got by without that jar of yellow stuff on your counter.

For you slackers, you can just visit your local Indian grocery. Here’s the rack at Bombay Grocery, my favorite local Indian place. You can get 800 gm ready prepared ghee for about 12 bucks. I got about 320 gm out of a pound of butter I bought for about 5 bucks. So making ghee at home is more a labor of love than an effort to achieve great savings. But you get to eat the solids!

References

1. Ike B.  garlic* paste.  WordPress 2/14/21.  https://theviewfromharbal.com/2021/02/14/garlic-paste/

2. Child J.  The Way to Cook.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989, B139. https://www.amazon.com/Way-Cook-Julia-Child/dp/0394532643/ref=sr_1_1?crid=18G40OJ4N595L&keywords=the+way+to+cook+julia+child&qid=1699301362&sprefix=th+wat+to+cook%2Caps%2C215&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.006c50ae-5d4c-4777-9bc0-4513d670b6bc

3. Achitoff-Gray N.  What’s a Smoke Point and Why Does it Matter?  Serious Eats 4/24/23.  https://www.seriouseats.com/cooking-fats-101-whats-a-smoke-point-and-why-does-it-matter

4. Gritzer D.  Clarified Butter Recipe.  Serious Eats9/16/22. https://www.seriouseats.com/clarified-butter-recipe

5. Top Ten Interesting Facts About Ghee.  Milky Mist.  https://www.milkymist.com/post/top-ten-interesting-facts-about-ghee#:~:text=Ghee%20is%20a%20clarified%20butter,leaving%20only%20the%20milk%20solids

6. Jaffrey M.  An Invitation to Indian Cooking.  New York: Vintage Books (Random House), 1973, 25-6.  https://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffrey-Invitation-1975-05-27-Paperback/dp/B019EWPSMO/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1MLGIR285KZQ2&keywords=Madhur+Jaffrey.+Invitation+to+Indian+cooking&qid=1699301495&sprefix=madhur+jaffrey.+invitation+to+indian+cooking%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-4

7. Ghee.  Wikepedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee

8. Butter. MMPA. https://www.mimilk.com/products/products-offerings/butter/