Recipe for ghee – clarified butter
We provide you with a delicious recipe for both clarified butter and ghee. Clarified butter is used for sauces such as Bearnaise Sauce and Hollandaise Sauce.
Ghee (and clarified butter) is especially used for frying because it does not burn as easily as butter.
What is ghee? Essentially, it is the pure butter oil that is left when you follow this recipe, where the butter’s content of milk protein, lactose, and water has almost been entirely removed. At the same time, it is caramelized, which gives it slight caramel notes to whatever you are frying. Ghee is especially used in Indian cuisine.
It is extremely suitable for browning meat. For example, after a sous vide session, as it requires a quick browning at high heat. I almost exclusively use ghee today for browning my meat after a water bath.
Ghee - clarified butter
Equipment
- Kitchen Scale
- Stove
- Frying Pan
- Knife
- Sieve
- Canning Jar
Ingredients
- 250 gram Butter Unsalted (but salted can also be used)
Instructions
Clarified butter
- Use either a good store-bought butter, unsalted butter or, for example, homemade butter, where you don’t need to salt it yourself beforehand.
- We used the homemade butter in this recipe.
- Cut the butter into smaller pieces and fry it in a heavy-bottomed pan over very medium heat. It takes about 30 minutes.
- When it melts, it foams, so make sure the pan is large. If you use salted butter, make sure to remove the foam.
- Make sure the butter is constantly simmering (not boiling vigorously) as you need to end up with a temperature of about 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit). When it stops sputtering, you're almost there, as the liquid has evaporated.
- Pour the butter through a cloth over a sieve (or use a cheesecloth if you have one) into a scalded jar (with a lid).
- Discard the white sediment in the cloth and let the yellow butter oil stand uncovered until it has cooled. No condensation should form in the jar.
- Your clarified butter should be uniform in color throughout and may vary in how yellow it is depending on the season and the diet of the cows.
Ghee
- Make your clarified butter as above, but do not stop at 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit).
- When you reach 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit), continue and start stirring a bit in the pot (try to avoid scraping the bottom).
- Now you need to go up to about 155 degrees Celsius (311 degrees Fahrenheit) - this can easily take up to 10 more minutes.
- Let it cool slightly and strain it through a cheesecloth/cloth tea filter and pour it into a scalded jar with a lid.
- Wait to close the lid until it has cooled.
Notes
Your clarified butter and ghee can be kept for several months refrigerated and a few weeks at room temperature.