Ghee or clarified butter is one of the healthiest additions to your diet.
It’s wonderful taste and aroma elevates even the most ordinary dishes to something special.
I use it (with a combimation of olive oil) for most of my cooking. It is especially needed for growing kids, and our grandma’s made sure we had a healthy dose of it while growing up!
Unlike butter, it does not need to be refrigerated and can be used as a cooking medium or a flavorful aromatic topping to your favorite dish!
Making it at home, ensures it’s purity, source and quality.
Here’s how to make your own butter, buttermilk and ghee using Malai/clotted cream extracted from raw milk!
Boil organic raw milk till full boil. Once cool, refrigerate without disturbing the top surface. After a few hours, you will find that a thick top layer of Malai or clotted cream has formed over the milk. Gently skim Malai off the milk. Collect Malai for 2-3 days till you have a big bowl ful.
Now add 2 tsp dahi to the Malai and leave on your kitchen counter for 4-5 hours. This step helps set the malai into a thick mass and helps in quick and easy formation of butter.
Now refrigerate the Malai once again till completely chilled. Also chill a big steel bowl to whisk the Malai in.
Transfer chilled Malai to the chilled bowl and whisk vigorously for 5 minutes. If the climate is hot, put the bowl back in fridge to chill for a few minutes. Then whisk again for another 5 minutes.
By this time you will observe that the Malai has thickened, and formed into clots of butter from which water starts to seperate.
Now it’s time to add some ice cubes to the bowl to help firm up the clotted butter.
Collect the butter from the bowl,
leaving behind all liquid. Do not discard the liquid, its delicious buttermilk.
You can strain and add some kala namak and bhuna jeera pwdr and enjoy as a healthy drink.
The whipped butter can also be used as table butter, to be enjoyed with hot paranthas or toast.
If you want to use the butter to make ghee here’s how you do it….
Place butter in a pan with a thick bottom on low heat. Cook butter, stirring frequently…
till the milk solids start to separate and clear ghee starts floating on top.
Once the milk solids begin to change color, switch off heat and leave undisturbed for a few minutes. You will see that the milk solids continue to cook in the residual heat and become a deep caramel brown.
Now strain the clear golden ghee and store in an air tight container.
Do not discard the milk solids.
Mix in your roti dough. It has wonderful taste and aroma!
PS: if you want a quicker process for making ghee, just use store bought organic unsalted butter instead of the homemade butter…the process remains the same.