What is Ghee? Why buy it? Can you make it?

Problem
I see ghee on menus in Indian restaurants and wonder what it is.
Ghee is sold in supermarkets in Singapore and probably London and worldwide.

Answer
Ghee is clarified butter.

How do you make it? You heat butter up in a saucepan or frying pan. The fatty stuff sinks and you skim off the clear stuff. It's basically curds and whey.

Why bother to make it? The advantage is that it keeps without being chilled.

It is also more like oil, so having less fat it burns less easily.

Indians use it for cooking. We buy it in Singapore to make Indian recipes.

If you can't get hold of it to buy it, and your recipe calls for it, you can make it yourself. From salted or unsalted butter? If you use salted butter it will foam up and even boil over so you need a high saucepan and need to be careful.

Some poeple prefer to use salted butter because it has better flavour and only have salted in the house. Others always buy unsalted butter, sometimes called sweet butter in the USA, because that is more suitable for cooking cakes desserts and pastry for desserts and sweet dishes.

You can see videos on making ghee on youtube.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker.