Method of Making Clarified Butter or Ghee at Home

Method and Details for homemade Ghee

Category :Recipes

Clarified butter is one of the best fat ingredients. I do not say it's good for health but Clarified butter taste very good and making it at home indeed make it healthier because the homemade clarified butter are pure and free from adulteration.

This is my first post in my food blog and I felt nothing can be better than clarified butter to start writing. Clarified butter is famously known in India as Ghee and there is actually no other translation is there in English that can specifically justify the name Ghee of clarified butter. In my opinion taste and aroma of butter is completely different compared to Ghee (Clarified butter), though both are made from the same source and both are basically fat content but still they are different. Ghee always be textured, runny and gooey, it looks like oil when it's heated and melted but the texture of butter is very soft ans smooth compared to Ghee. It is not tough to identify that difference. Here my point is that even if Ghee is made from butter by heating and processing but it does not stay butter or any similar to that, so why it should be called a clarified or refined version of butter.

Once you open a jar of pure Ghee the aroma of Ghee will immensely tempt you to have it.

When I open a jar of pure Ghee, I actually open a jar of memories and first flash of memory that comes in my mind is my mom giving me a Ghee chapati roll seasoned with salt. The tempting aroma of Ghee makes men want to have that Ghee chapati roll. This Ghee chapati roll is actually a comfort food for me. Another memory is of making Ghee at home, My mom is used to of making Ghee at home and I always helped her. Thanks to her I learned the method of making nice Ghee.

I learnt that method is very important for making a good Ghee. Any mistake can change the aroma, taste and texture of Ghee. I have not made Ghee individually till now because I always fear ruining it. I can say I am a fan of home made Ghee. I have tried many packed Ghees available in the market but not even one was as good as home made, maybe that's because they make it with machines to cut the time consumption. Whatever maybe the reason but I can share my mom's method of making Ghee with you guys.

Method:

First you need to get fat containing milk, toned packed milk will not work. Now the next thing is collecting cream from milk. Collecting cream from milk is not an easy task and requires loads of patience. To collect cream, Boil the milk enough, then refrigerate it for 2 to 3 hours after that carefully take the cream (solid top layer of milk) out from milk and keep in a bowl and again boil the milk and repeat the same. keep collecting cream this way until you get a big bowl full of cream. Keep the cream in refrigerator all this while. Once you have collected enough cream you have to make cream curd of that. Add 3 to 4 tablespoon of curd into your collected cream and mix it slightly and keep covered in a safe place of room temperature. After 12 to 18 hours you can make butter using blender (I use hand blender) and keep blending until it become solid but and get separate from butter milk (This is the actual butter milk and butter milk taste sour because we made curd of cream), now strain out the butter milk from butter. Next step is to heat this butter until the fat and milk solids get separate. Keep heating till the milk solid compound get a golden brown color, once it's golden brown take it out of flame and immediately strain it then put the Ghee jar in ice water bowl so that it can cool down sooner. Ghee will taste bitter if it stays more on the flame and if you get it off early then there will be a little sourness in the taste and aroma of wouldn't be so good.

If you do not have patience of collecting cream and still want to try then get the plane cream from market and boil it till one boil and once it cool downs, curd it and follow the process. We have never made Ghee with market available cream but I think this will also work well.