Desi Ghee
Desi Ghee is a unique item within households in many south asian countries. It is used for its culinary, medicinal and beauty aspects. Yes, beauty too, if your lips are chaps a little ghee rubbed on them would do the trick. Got bleeding gums ghee to the rescue. Ghee has a unique antibacterial component to it as well making it a must have for any household. Growing up I remember my great grand mother telling my mom to use home made Ghee for cooking every thing at home. Yes, everything. Mind you, my great grand mother lived up to be 101 years. She liked her food with flavor and Ghee was a must for certain dishes. Two dishes I remember fondly are, young jackfruit fry (Polos Mallum) and Kakiri (Yellow cucumber curry) that required a generous amount of ghee in my grandmother's thought. Else she would say, "this is cooked for pigs". That statement loses some in translation. She was a gracious women, god rest her soul. So, back to Ghee without digressing too much.
At home, most of the food we make are either traditional Sri lankan or South Indian. Home made Ghee being one of them. For some time I have been making ghee at home with store bought butter. However, with store bought butter, the problem is you do not know if the milk used for it is coming from cows with A2 protien. Desi cows produce milk with A2 protien. So finding such milk in USA can be a bit tough. But I was in luck after I learned Snowville Creamery tests all their cows for A2 protien and use their milk only. If you want to read more about Snowville Creamery please go here :- www.snowvillecreamery.com/the-cows.html
I have been using their milk for over 5 years now. We love the milk, especially my daughter who can tell the difference between Snowville and other brands milk. She only drinks Snowville full fat milk.
For making ghee, I use butter made out of Snowville Whipping cream.
Here's my process:
- I take half of the Whipping cream container and put it in a big bowl. Then I add a couple of table spoons of creame taken out of my yogurt ( when I make yogurt with full far milk a layer of cream forms on top. I remove that and save it.) Then I leave my creame to ferment out for about 5-8 hrs at room temperature. Then I put it back in the refrigerator so it can cool.
- Then I take that creame ( after about 4-5 hrs or can be kept overnight in the fridge.) and whip it.
More Whipping
you need it to go past the whipped cream state. And then after about 10-12 mins of Whipping it will look like this :
Butter formed and buttermilk separated. Voila! You made butter from. Scratch. You need to drain this butter out. At this point if you want you can knead the dough with salt to make salted bbutter or any types of butter you want.
I take it and put it on the stove and melt it to make ghee.
When you are boiling it foam will appear on top and you will also hear a spluter. You need to keep watching to make sure it will not boil over or burn. Once the milk solids are all burned off you will get you golden treasure. Making ghee on the stove will take some practice. Until you get to the right consistency. A fool proof method would be to use the Instant Pot -- if you have one. On Saute mode for 10-12 mins you will get perfect ghee. Good thing about Instant Pot is you don't have to worry about boiling over or burning.
So, here you have perfect desi ghee made at home. With half a gallon of creame I make about 32 Oz of butter. That's very economical and healthy in my opinion.
Give plenty of ghee to your kids. Growing bodies need that fat. As for us grown-ups a spoon of ghee with your rice or chapati will never hurt anyone.