Make Your own Ghee at home.

Make your own ghee at home. It’s easy to do and very versatile. The homemade version has a more neutral buttery flavour that has several uses. Making a curry, producing French emulsified sauces, in bakery goods or high-temperature frying.

To get the best from your curry creations do read our posts on, – Make your own Garam Masala, – How to make Indian onion pastes, and Make your own Indian flavouring Pastes .

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What is ghee?

Have you ever wondered what’s in that tin of ghee you religiously buy to make your curry as authentic as possible? Well, its butter, yes just butter. It’s not exactly identical as the butter on your toast. It has been cooked to remove the milky part of the butter and extend its shelf life.

Now if you’re into French classic cookery you may have come across clarified butter. Well, it’s basically the same thing. For the Indian version the base butter is different, and it cooked slightly longer to change the flavour.

But for all practical purposes we can make our own ghee to use for a curry or a hollandaise sauce as we wish. You can store the butter for up to a month and a half in the fridge. Or as I do freeze it in ice cube trays to have handy blocks ready when I need them.

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Make your own ghee.

All we need is-

1x 250g block of unsalted butter

Small saucepan

Small ladle or soup spoon

Fine heatproof sieve

Heatproof bowl (pyrex is ideal)

A good result needs a good start and that’s the butter. You don’t need to buy the most expensive, but it must be unsalted. If you use salted butter for this, you will have a briny deposit in the pan that can spoil the finished product. As the butter cooks the milky part will rise to the surface and the solids will fall to the bottom of the pan.

Place the block of butter into the pan and pop onto a medium heat. Don’t use a lid as we need to keep an eye on the butter cooking

As the butter melts, foam will appear around the edge of the pan. Don’t worry that’s normal but we don’t want the butter to be rapidly boiling, just a gentle simmer.

When the foam covers the surface of the pan begin to skim it off the surface of the butter. You will see the liquid butter below becoming clearer. Listen to the pan it will be making a noise a little bit like a deep fat fryer after cooking chips. A kind of crackle as the last of the moisture in the oil evaporates. The butter in the pan is doing the same thing.

The tricky bit.

It’s very important you do not leave the pan at this point. Not only will you spoil the butter, but you will have the same danger as a deep fat fryer. If the fat becomes too hot it will burn and eventually ignite.

Keep a close eye on the pan and you will see the butter stop moving around. The sound coming from the pan will also all but stop. Both indicators tell you the butter is ready for straining. Don’t hesitate, strain it into the bowl at once.

The pan will have a deposit on the bottom, this should be a light brown and not welded to the pan. If it’s dark and smells a bit nutty, you have over cooked it a bit. You will have made what the French refer to as Burre Noisette (nut brown butter). It should be ok for a curry, but no good for hollandaise etc.

Let the ghee cool in the bowl and ether transfer to a lidded container or pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Once frozen tip out the cubes and store in a sealed plastic bag or box back in the freezer. NOTE, If the ghee is not stored in a sealed container, it will absorb the flavour of anything store close to it. In the fridge it will be good for six weeks, in the freezer up to three months.

TIP

When you go shopping, look out for unsalted butter that has been discounted as its close to its use by date. Take it home and cook it straight away, you will give the butter a new lease of life and save the waste of it been discarded.

As you can see it’s not difficult and only take a few minutes to do, give it a try.

Enjoy Life,

John.

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©John Webber. 2023