Ghee Making

No Indian pantry is complete without this most important ingredient, Ghee or Nei (tamil). Almost all sweets are made with this aromatic ingredient and just a "chottu" or drop of it will make a plain meal fit for gods which is infact true, as ghee is a major offering in yagna's.

At home making ghee from butter was always a coveted process. I have seen my mom do it a number of times with the exact same result -- a lovely tasting aromatic ghee.

For those of us who live in this part of the world with electric cooking ranges patience is the key to get the perfect tasting ghee.



Method:
Take a deep non stick sauce pan. Keep the heat at medium and place the slab of saltless butter in the saucepan. In about 10 minutes the butter would have completly melted starts to foam and rise. Keep stirring so that it does not overflow. At this time the fat is melting and the water content is evaporating. The foam starts to subside and the liquid starts to become clear. But you will still find yellow fat at the bottom of the pan, so keep stirring so that it does not burn. Once the ghee starts to turn pale brown turn off the heat. Remove from heat if you are using a thick bottomed pan as the pan will cause the ghee to burn. If the vessel is not thick bottomed, keep it in on the coil and the residual heat will turn the ghee to a beautiful brown colour and give out a rich and beautiful smell. Store in a clean dry bottle.

Note: The butter must turn pale brown, if not it will turn bad soon giving off an oily smell.