Ghee: What It Is and How to Make It at Home

Butter is not just fat. Ordinary butter contains around 16–18% water; the rest is milk protein, the milk sugar lactose and salts. It is the water and protein that make butter awkward to fry with: it foams, spits and burns quickly.

Ghee contains almost no water or protein. According to the USDA food composition database, 100 g of ghee contains over 99 g of fat and less than 0.3 g of protein. Hence its properties in the kitchen:

• It doesn’t burn as quickly. You can fry spices and vegetables in ghee at high heat without black residue and bitterness.
• It keeps longer. Without water, spoilage proceeds more slowly, so ghee doesn’t need refrigerating for the first few weeks.
• A different flavor. The browned milk solids at the final stage give a nutty, slightly caramel aroma.

Clarified butter, familiar from French cooking, shares the same idea with ghee: it is also rendered milk fat. The difference is the degree of heating. Clarified butter is often heated gently and taken off once the water has gone and the solids have been skimmed. Ghee stays on the heat a little longer — until the sediment at the bottom turns golden brown. That is why its flavor is richer. If you have bought good clarified butter, in the kitchen it will behave almost the same as ghee.

Making ghee at home is not difficult; it only takes time and attention. The main thing is not to walk away from the stove in the last few minutes.

What you need:

• Butter. Unsalted, with no vegetable fats added. The better the butter, the tastier the ghee. 500 g of butter yields roughly 400 g of ghee.
• A heavy-bottomed pan. In a thin pan the sediment will burn before the ghee is ready.
• Cheesecloth or a fine sieve and a clean, dry glass jar with a lid.

How to make it:

• Step 1. Melt the butter. Cut it into cubes, put it in the pan and melt over low heat. Don’t cover it: the water needs to evaporate.
• Step 2. Wait for it to simmer and foam. The butter will start to simmer quietly and white foam will gather on top. You can skim it off with a spoon or leave it — it will settle or be strained out anyway.
• Step 3. Keep it on low heat. The butter will crackle: that is the water boiling off. Don’t stir and don’t turn up the heat. This stage usually takes 15–30 minutes, depending on the amount of butter and your stove.
• Step 4. Watch for the signs it is ready. The crackling dies down, the bubbles become small, the butter turns clear and golden, and the sediment at the bottom is light brown. The kitchen smells of cookies or nuts. At this point take the pan off the heat.
• Step 5. Cool and strain. Let it stand for 5–10 minutes and strain through several layers of cheesecloth into a dry jar. Don’t pour the sediment into the jar: it will make the ghee spoil faster.

If the sediment has turned black and the smell has become bitter, the butter has overheated. Such ghee tastes bitter, and it is better to start again on lower heat.

Hot ghee is clear; cooled, it is thick and pale, often with a grainy texture. This is normal and does not affect quality.

Ghee holds a special place in the classical texts of Ayurveda. The Charaka Samhita, in its chapter on fats, lists four main ones — ghee, plant oil, animal fat and bone marrow — and calls ghee the best of them. In the chapter on food, according to the text, cow’s ghee is sweet in taste and cooling in action, calms vata and pitta, and supports digestion, memory and strength. The Ashtanga Hridaya says ghee is suitable for people of any age.

That is why ghee turns up everywhere in Ayurveda.

• In food. A little ghee, according to Charaka, aids digestion: food should not be completely dry. In Ayurvedic cooking ghee is used to fry spices for dal and kitchari, and is added to rice and sweets. More on the rules of eating in The Ayurvedic diet.
• Before panchakarma. At the preparation stage the doctor prescribes ghee or a medicated oil on an empty stomach in gradually increasing doses. This is a medical procedure: the dose is set each day according to how the person feels. How it works is explained in Preparing for panchakarma.
• As a base for medicines. Ghee is cooked with herbs just as oils are, producing medicated ghritas. These are prescribed by a doctor.
• In treatments. Ghee is rarely used for full-body massage, but in some treatments, for the eyes for example, it is used on prescription. On massage oils, see Oils for Ayurvedic massage.

By tradition, ghee is especially suitable when pitta and vata predominate. With kapha — a heavy, slow state — less is used. What these doshas are is explained in The three doshas: vata, pitta, kapha.

Ghee is often described as a superfood. A sober view: it is a milk fat, tasty and convenient, with a long history in traditional medicine. But it is still almost pure fat.

• Calories. According to the USDA, 100 g of ghee contains about 876 kcal. A teaspoon, about 5 g, is roughly 45 kcal; a tablespoon, about 13 g, roughly 115 kcal.
• Saturated fat. About 62 g per 100 g — more than in butter, because ghee contains no water. The WHO advises that saturated fat make up less than 10% of total energy intake. On a 2,000 kcal diet that is about 22 g a day — roughly two tablespoons of ghee if there are no other sources.
• Cholesterol. Ghee contains cholesterol, like any milk fat.
• Vitamins. Ghee contains fat-soluble vitamins, vitamin A above all, but there is no need to eat it for the vitamins: the servings are too small.

The practical conclusion: use ghee instead of butter, not in addition to it. If you have high cholesterol, heart, liver or gallbladder disease, or your doctor has restricted fats, discuss the amount of ghee with them. Taking ghee by the spoonful on an empty stomach is an Ayurvedic therapeutic procedure; it is done only on a doctor’s prescription, not for a “cleanse” at home.