Homemade Ghee

Ghee is a type of clarified butter.  You boil the butter until the milk solids turn brown and sink to the bottom of the pan. Then you run it through a strainer and cheesecloth to remove the milk solids.  Ghee is a great replacement for butter when frying foods or putting on your vegetables instead of butter.  It doesn't need to be refrigerated but if you put it in the refrigerator it will keep for a year.  We use it fast enough that I keep it in the cabinet so it is not so hard to scoop out.

I'm not going to do a price comparison on making your own ghee for a few reasons.  The first jar of ghee that was given as a gift to me is organic and from grass fed cows.  You can use grass-fed butter to make your ghee but it is hard to find around here.  So because I used standard butter there is no comparison in price between my ghee, that took 4 sticks to fill my ghee jar, and the organic ghee.  Next time I might use Kerrygold butter from grass-fed cows.  I saw it at the Woods in Warrensburg and also the Costco.  But I wanted to know if I could do the recipe before I used some more expensive butter.  I'm also not as strict as some people about eating grass-fed only beef so my opinion wasn't too strong on grass-fed butter.    

One note: for some reason my butter had a froth on the top the whole time.  I don't know why. So the first batch with 2 sticks cooked for quite a while before I wondered what I was supposed to be seeing.  It had stopped bubbling completely.  I took a spoon and moved the foam aside and sure enough there was very brown milk solids on the bottom.  My second batch I kept checking by moving the foam and didn't cook as long.  I used low heat, set at a 3, and it was perfect.

I got the instructions from Nom Nom Paleo:  Food for Humans. It's in her book which I have.  It's also here on her website.   

Check it out, try some ghee.