How to Make Ghee

After coming to US, I was missing quite a few things in terms of food.On the top of my list was home made ghee /Toop (Tup). My idea of comfort food is ghee rice / ghee khichadi which I was missing the most. I did manage to get the ghee for religious purposes and also ghee which can be used for Tadka etc. But I could not bring myself to eat the Amul Ghee with rice. So continued my cravings. I was waiting for someone to come from India and while doing so get some 2-3 kilo's of ghee for me, but alas no one was scheduled to make a trip. But one day while browsing orkut's Receipes' community, I saw a post which mentioned using unsalted butter to make the ghee. Unfortunately that post didnt mention anything about the procedure.

I had never noticed the unsalted butter sitting right next to the salted ones on the shelves before this day. I had never ever made Ghee back home , only watched Aai make it. But it had never registered in my mind. So after buying the butter, I pestered Aai over Gtalk and asked her 1000 questions about time, colors, how will I understand if its done. What will it look like etc etc .....
The only smart thing I did was to use only 2 sticks for the first time, that gave me the remaining two sticks to experiment. Since the very first time it did get a bit burnt.

However,now after a year I have a tried and tested receipe which I use almost every alternate month and make ghee at home.

After getting introduced to the blogging world, I did notice that many fellow bloggers use similar method to make ghee, however, I cant resist the urge to put up my receipe as well.
I use the 2 packs of Unsalted butter ,which is ~ 8 lbs and I get ~ 6 lbs of ghee. I have never measured, but this is the general calculation. You should always take 25% more butter than the ghee that you need.

Ingredients:

Unsalted butter sticks
A pinch of Salt

Method:
1. Place the butter sticks in a thick bottomed pan.
2.Before adding the butter , make sure that the pan is completely dry.
3.Place the pan on medium high heat till all the sticks get melted.
4. When the melted butter starts boiling, it will begin to be frothy and sputter a lot at first as the water boils off.
5.Continue boiling the butter uncovered.
6.As butter boils it will get separated in three layers.
a. Froth / Foam - which is the water forms the top layer.
b. Transparent Liquid - Which is the actual ghee is the middle layer
c. Milk Solids - This will settle down to bottom of the pan.
7.Slowly the liquid on top becomes more and more transparent. When the butter has a golden transparent color, there is very little foam left on the surface, and the solids have settled on the bottom.
8. At this stage, add the pinch of salt, keep it on very low heat and stir it continuously as it can burn very quickly. The salt will help the solids to settle down and also make the ghee to get danedaar (Kanidar in marathi).
9.When the solids on the bottom of the pan turn light brown and the liquid deepens to golden and turns translucent and fragrant, you can notice a nice aroma from the pan.
10. At this stage remove the pan from heat and transfer on a cold burner. If you keep it on the hot burner, the solids will burn off giving burnt taste to all the ghee.( This was my mistake :( )
11. Use a mesh strainer to strain off the solids. Store the ghee in a glass bottle, make sure its clean and dry before filling the ghee.
12. Now the milk solids that are left behind, you can add sugar /jaggery powder and eat it . It tastes real good. It is called as beri in marathi.

After removing the beri , you can use the utensil to make daal or add the daal to this utensil after making it. The taste is awesome.

Thanks for stopping by.