All this talk about butter is making me hungry. Richard mentioned in the comments that he bought some ghee recently and has been enjoying it, so I thought I'd post a recipe. Ghee is the Hindi word for clarified butter. It's butter that has had everything removed but the fat. Rich in fat-soluble vitamins and lacking the sometimes problematic lactose and casein, ghee has rightfully been considered a health food in India since ancient times.Another advantage of ghee is its high smoke point, which is higher than butter because it doesn't contain any protein or sugars. Consequently, food sauteed in ghee has a clean, rich taste.
The recipe is simple but touchy. I recommend using the best butter you can get your hands on. 100% grass-fed, unsalted cultured butter is the best.
Ingredient and materials
- Butter (1 lb minimum)
- Wide-mouth glass jars
- Cheesecloth
- Rubber bands
- Place the butter in a saucepan and turn the heat to medium until it's melted.
- Once it begins to boil, turn the heat down to low. It's very important to calibrate the heat correctly. Typically, you will want the burner on its lowest setting. The idea is to evaporate the water without burning the oil. It should boil, but slowly.
- The melted butter starts out cloudy but gradually clears up as the water evaporates. At the same time, a crust will form on the surface of the ghee and the bottom of the pan. Keep the heat very low.
- Push a portion of the top crust to the side with a spoon to see inside of the saucepan. When the butter looks clear and bubbles only rise from the bottom every few seconds, it's done. You have to be very careful because once the water has evaporated, the fat heats up quickly and burns the crust. This gives the ghee an acrid flavor and color. Make sure to handle the pot cautiously, because hot oil can give severe burns.
- Allow the ghee to cool until it's warm but not hot. Place a piece of cheesecloth over the lid of your jar. Secure it with a rubber band. Pour the ghee through the cheesecloth, into the jar.
- Store ghee in the refrigerator or at room temperature. It keeps much longer than butter.
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5 comments:
Nice recipe.
Ghee is available in some of the Asian/pakistani/Indian shops here in Scotland / UK, but it comes in big tins and I've always assumed there were dodgy additives in there too. I'll have a look next time I'm near such a shop.
Chris, ghee in a shop may not have additives, but if it's from poor quality dairy, I wouldn't use it. I strongly agree with Stephan's point about the quality of the dairy used being important. Here are a few reasons why:
Highly toxic compounds like dioxin and mercury are stored in animal fats and passed on to us when we eat those fats, where they build up in our own bodies. These compounds are more likely to be in the fat of animals non-organically-raised in regions where there is significant industrial pollution.
Butter from such areas is already a concentrated source of these compounds. With ghee, the butter is reduced down to its fat exclusively, concentrating further the part of the butter where the toxic compounds are stored.
It gets worse if cows are fed grain, non-organic feed, or worst, bits of other cows (all that animal fat that has stored up pollutants going directly into their animal fat and increasing their levels). Pollutants are found in higher levels in grains than in grass. Plus, grain-feeding decreases the quality of the fats both in affecting the omega-3/6 ratio and in reducing the fat-soluble vitamins Stephan's been talking about.
It's a good argument for making your own ghee from the butter of cows raised organically on pasture (preferably spring or early autumn grass) in as unpolluted a region as possible. Nowhere is free from highly toxic pollutants, due to air and water contamination of soil, but some places are better than others.
Food Is Love
Thanks Debs. Another thing to watch out for is "vegetable ghee", which is hydrogenated vegetable oil. Many, if not most Indian restaurants use it instead of real ghee because it's much cheaper.
I'd never heard of vegetable ghee before. That's pretty scary.
I wonder if there's a problem with fraud, of vegetable ghee being labeled as real ghee, similar to the level of fraud around olive oil detailed in this New Yorker piece. I wouldn't be surprised.
Food Is Love
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