There are several things that I have added to my “do not buy from the store list” over the years — simply because they are easy to make at home and the markup at the store is often absurd. The first was nut butters, then recently kombucha (although I still buy one from time to time), and now ghee. Granted, it is much cheaper if you buy it from an Indian store rather than Whole Foods, but now that I’ve made it at home and know how easy it is, there’s really no need for that either. 🙂

Ok, first thing’s first. What is ghee?

Ghee is a clarified butter — meaning that the milk solids and water are removed from the butter, leaving a purer version and a higher concentration of the good fats. In a perfect process, this also leaves you with an end product that is dairy and lactose-free, although if you have an allergy or a severe intolerance to dairy, I would probably steer clear just to be safe.

Other potential benefits of ghee include:

• increased metabolism
• high amount of butyric acid lends to improved digestion
• vitamins A, D, E, and K
• contains CLA (conjugated lineolic acid), which can aid in weight loss and slow progression of certain types of diseases

Obviously, if all you eat is ghee, you’re not going to speed up your metabolism and lose weight. It’s fat guys. But choosing it over butter when I can means that I’m getting slightly more benefits with the same delicious taste.

Ok, let’s get to this recipe.

I used 8 oz of grass-fed, UNSALTED butter. Two things are important here — the grass-fed and the unsalted.

Cows that have been grass-fed produce milk (and butter) that is higher in the vitamins listed above, meaning you will get more out of your ghee than if you use other types of butter. Unsalted is important because as you simmer and cook the butter, your end product will be significantly saltier than when it started, which you probably don’t want.

I used Kerrygold butter (no, this is not sponsored), but any grass-fed butter is awesome.

Then I cut the butter into cubes about an inch or so in size to aid in quicker and more even melting.

Over medium heat, I melted the butter in a small saucepan.

Once the butter was melted, I waited for it to simmer (a couple minutes). When it started simmering, I turned the heat down to medium-low to allow it to continue simmering but not have it burn.

During this process I made sure to stir the butter occasionally. Soon the butter started to become opaque and create a foam.

FOAM.

After foaming for a bit, the milk solids start to separate, stick to the sides, and some will fall to the bottom. You can scrape the sides to help the solids collect in the bottom to be strained out later.

The butter will start to become clear again as you can see below. A little bit of the foam remains, but you will be able to see more to the bottom as it clears up.

Here’s the important part and how you know when it is done.

The butter will undergo a SECOND foaming and look almost identical to the first. Once this occurs, you can take the saucepan off the heat and prepare to strain it.

I bought cheesecloth from Amazon and used a small tea strainer I already had to strain out the milk solids. You can either strain it right into the container you want to use, which I did, or into an intermediary container. If you do the latter option, try and use a container that has a pouring spout to make transfer easier.

Here is what the saucepan looked like after straining. There are still some milk solids left in the pan.

Here is the final product. Beautiful, glorious ghee.

It will still be pretty hot, so leave it on the counter to set as it cools. It can take up to a day to fully set, so if you want you can be impatient like me and put in the fridge after a few hours.

Since it no longer contains the milk fats, you are able to leave it out at room temperature. I prefer this method and keep it in the pantry so that it is easily spreadable and not as hard as it would be in the fridge.

And that’s it guys. As easy as that. My main use for ghee is to make my scrambled eggs every day, but you can also use it in butter coffee, spread on toast, or really any way that you would use butter, including baking. Happy ghee-ing!

Questions:

• Do you use ghee?
• What do you use it for?