How to make Ghee!

February 16, 2012

By Sonia

A question like, “How to make Ghee?” for an Indian is similar to “How to make Rice?” asked off of the rice-eating world! In India, we eat Ghee with everything… Breakfast has it, so do our appetizers, entrees and desserts! The only thing *most* Indians don’t do is eat a spoonful of it, straight up… Although I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody does! I’ve never been a big fan of Ghee, but I do like it in some of my Dal’s and especially on my roti (as you see in the picture above!).

So what is Ghee? Ghee is clarified butter which is made by slowly heating butter until the fat and the dairy elements in butter, separate. The wiki describes how ghee is made from scratch very accurately! To be more specific, how butter is made from milk, and then ghee. I’ve grown up seeing my mom make it this way. I’ve never actually tried making butter from the US milk, so I’ve skipped this step. Some day… until then, I’ve mastered making ghee from sticks of butter… not rocket science, just simple home-made ghee…

Ghee

Makes: 1 bottle

Prep Time:

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Ready in: 15 minutes

Ingredients

4 sticks of unsalted butter

Directions

1. In a small, dry saute pan add the 4 sticks of butter. The pan *needs* to be dry, else you are going to witness a lot of spluttering as the butter melts, which let me tell you is no fun!

2. Get the butter to melt at medium heat, in my case, I had it on 5 & 1/2.

3. Once the butter has started bubbling, reduce the heat to medium-low, 4 in my case and watch the pan like a hawk.

4. You are looking for the butter to separate and the milk solids to sink to the bottom. At times, you might have too many bubbles to see the bottom of the pan. I usually just pick the pan up (hence a small pan *wink*) and check it.

5. Strain out the ghee into a glass jar. If you don’t have a strainer, use a spoon to hold back any floating residue and let all the particles sink to the bottom before you pour the ghee into a bottle.