How To Make Ghee Four Ways

Ghee is butter which has been clarified to remove water and milk solids, which imparts a toasty aroma and flavor in the finished butter. Even better? Turning butter into ghee makes it last even longer and makes it suitable for high-heat cooking and roasting, and it even renders it lactose-free for those avoiding it. Ghee is simply butter made even better by a long, slow cook.

Traditionally, butter is turned to ghee via the stovetop, but making ghee in the microwave, the slow cooker, or the electric pressure cooker all have their own advantages. Here are four ways to make ghee at home.

Ghee is a form of clarified butter cooked just a bit longer until the milk solids brown. Clarifying butter is a slow, steady process of driving out water and milk solids so that you’re left with pure butterfat. This butterfat keeps longer than butter and has a much higher smoke point (meaning it can cook at higher temperatures without burning), making it a useful fat to have in the kitchen.

Ghee, a traditional Indian preparation of clarified butter, has seen a new wave of popularity due to its inclusion in the Whole30, Paleo, and ketogenic diet movements. As a pure source of fat — and not to mention flavor — it’s strongly recommended by all these protocols.

Beyond the cooking benefits and reported health benefits, ghee is also delicious. It has a distinct warm and nutty taste and lends buttery goodness to dishes like stir-fries or pan-sears without any of the potential burnt, bitter tastes that can result from overcooking butter.

Read more: What Is Ghee?

A number of variables will determine the final color of ghee made at home, from the butter to the method for making it. Grass-fed butter generally results in a deeper hue because it has more milk proteins which brown during the clarification process.

Stovetop and Instant Pot methods also result in a richer hue, as they both use higher heat for cooking. Microwaving and slow cooking are the most commonly undercooked methods, since it’s trickier to check in on the process.

So how do you know you’ve made ghee and not clarified butter? The milk solids (these are white or cloudy in color) should drop to the bottom of the vessel before they brown, but they need additional cooking time to toast. Look for browning around the edge of the pot, dish, or crock before straining.

• Ghee can be made with any type of butter you choose, although we recommend an unsalted variety.
• Keep in mind that the Whole30 asks that your ghee be organic and grass-fed, so you’ll need to start with organic, grand-fed butter. These butters tend to have more milk solids, so expect a slightly lower yield than with other butter.

There are three key steps that apply to all four methods for making ghee: Cutting the butter into even pieces so it melts quickly and evenly, cooking the butter over moderate heat to drive out moisture, and straining the ghee for storage. Each method below has one key step in addition to the universal three.

• Stovetop: Skim It! Use a clean spoon to skim the foam that develops as the butter cooks. You can save this foam (it’s mostly milk solids) for another use. This helps the butter turn to ghee and is especially helpful when using grass-fed butter.
• Microwave: Use a short, wide vessel. Hard lesson learned here — if you use a tall measuring cup or bowl you’ll basically make a butter geyser in the microwave. Smells great, but a pain to clean up. Using an 8×8-inch glass pan cooks the butter evenly without eruptions.
• Slow cooker: Cook it a little longer than you think. The slow cooker is my new favorite method for making ghee because you can make a big batch without worry of overcooking it. The tricky part — especially if your slow cooker has a dark insert — is making sure the butter actually gets a little toasty. Let your ghee cook until it’s beginning to brown around the edges of the crock.
• Instant Pot: Continues cooking off the heat. Cooking ghee in the Instant Pot is fast, even if it doesn’t use pressure cooking at all. Be sure to turn off the pot before the butter has browned as the residual heat will continue to cook the butter.

Once strained, cool your ghee before covering for long-term storage. You can store cooled ghee in the refrigerator for about three months, or freeze it for up to six months. I tend to keep my ghee in the pantry, where it stays cool but pliable, making it easy to scoop out for cooking; it will keep well for at least a month.

Use ghee almost anywhere you’d use oil for cooking: for coating pans for oven roasting vegetables, for sautéing chicken breasts, or for stir-frying. Melting sweet potatoes are one of my personal favorite applications. And man, oh man, what ghee will do for your morning scrambled eggs or fried egg is nothing short of magic.