How we make Ghee in America

Ghee is the most refined end product of milk. (When you make Ghee, you are distilling or concentrating the quality of the milk you started with. This includes, antibiotics, hormones, chemical pesticides, etc. For this reason, one should always use the best 'organic' milk you can find.) When you milk a cow, you get whole milk. If you let this milk sit for a while, cream rises to the top. If you skim off the cream and then churn it, after a while and all of a sudden, the fat globules will begin to stick to each other and form butter. What is left over is buttermilk.

In America today, very little butter is churned the old fashioned way. Most modern dairies, even ëorganicí ones, no longer churn their cream to make butter. In a typical dairy in America, the cream is now pushed through a fine mesh screen in which the heavier and larger molecules of butter are held on one side of the screen while the smaller molecules of buttermilk pass on through. I recently asked an Ayurvedic Teacher-Vaidya about what difference this makes. He said that butter made without churning is lacking in a quality of Fire, Agni. He went further in his consideration of difference; the home-based Indian culture churns their cream with a hand churn, rolling it back and forth between their hands. This back and forth action, he said, imparts a particular balancing quality to the Ghee- instead of the one way churning of a gear driven churn.

When we consider the process of butter making at this level, we are in the realm of subtlety, but it is in exactly this realm that much of what is pure and purifying, sattvic, is found.

Once you have obtained your butter, heat it in a stainless steel or enamel pot over a low flame. As it begins to boil, moisture evaporates off and whitish cloudy milk solids rise to the top and sink to the bottom. Do not stir it. After an hour and half to several hours, depending on the amount and the size of the pot and the amount of Ghee compared to the flame, your Ghee will be ready. This ëmomentí is very critical. If you cook the Ghee too little, you will be left with moisture in the Ghee and it will lack the exquisite taste that it can develop. Also, it will not keep without some souring. If you cook it too much, it will burn and impart a certain nutty flavor to the Ghee. This does not ruin the Ghee at all, but it is to be noticed, so that over time you can capture the perfect Ghee to be experienced between these two ëextremesí.

After the Ghee is done, you skim off the top light crust of whitish milk solids, if any. The heavier ones at the bottom of the pot are traditionally used to make sweets. Children in India love them and always plead with their Mothers to have the leftovers when Ghee is made.

Then, you pour the golden, sweet-smelling liquid through doubled over cheesecloth- to catch any last impurities and finally bottle it, leaving the burned milk solids (caramelized lactose) on the bottom of the pot you cooked it in. Be sure to not close the glass jar into which you pour the hot Ghee until it comes to room temperature. The reason for this is that there should not be any moisture from condensation that might form on the inside of the jar. It is moisture that spoils Ghee, allowing mold to grow and quickly causing it to go bad. This is the reason that you always use a clean and dry spoon to take your Ghee out of its container.

                    ORGANIC GHEE