Desi Ghee / Clarified butter

I just love the smell of ghee lingering around the house after it is made. It is very aromatic and heavenly.

Ghee is used a lot in Indian cooking and is also called clarified butter. Main ingredient for making the ghee is butter and make sure the quality butter is used for ghee making to get the best results.

I always use unsalted kerri gold irish butter from Costco. You can use salted as well if you do not plan to make any sweets with it. 

The type of butter and the amount of time you cook the butter depends on the end result. Using the kerri gold butter achieves the yellowish color which is very similar to the ghee which we get in India. 

There are many ways if making ghee and the most common way is to make it using an open pot and allowing to simmer over a long time.

I have started using the pressure cooker to make the ghee, and it is fast and easy to make.

Ingredients Required:

Butter - 16 oz or less

How to make:

Pressure cooker method:

I use 16 oz butter in my 5 liter pressure cooker pan. Please make sure not use more than this quantity in a 5 liter pressure cooker as it would start pouring out.

Place the butter blocks in the pressure cooker, close the lid , add the whistle and heat on high.

Wait for the whistles to start coming, usually it takes 6-7 whistles for me to get the ghee in this state.

Easiest way is to count the seconds between whistles and once the delay between them whistles increase then immediately switch off the stove.

Be careful as one extra whistle might burn the ghee.

Quick release the pressure and store in a stainless steel container.

If required you can filter out the milk solids, but I usually just pour it in a container slowly and the milk solids would be left behind.

It would turn to solid state on cooling.

So for me, I started getting 8 seconds between the whistles for the first 7 whistles and after that it went over 10 seconds so i switched off my stove.

Open pan method:

This is the traditional method where the butter is placed on a wide open pan and cooked on medium heat till you see the solids settle at the bottom and the ghee is brownish in color and is clear.

Once you blow the froth on top, you should be able to see the bottom of the pan.

Another test is to drop a curry leaf in the ghee and it should start spluttering.

Allow to cool and then transfer to a stainless steel container.