Brown Butter Ghee
(not my image - from Megumi Nachev via Unsplash)
I think brown butter ghee tastes much better than regular ghee, it’s a little more babysitting and time consuming, but it’s all worth the taste. Please read through the instructions before starting, as the process can go very quickly! It looks like a lot of steps, but I promise, it’s not very difficult, but I wanted to provide you with as much information and descriptions as possible.
Ingredient
16 ounces of unsalted butter, diced into 1 inch cubes (or sliced into pats)
Directions
In a small 2 or 3 quart sauce pan, melt the butter over medium high heat. Stir occasionally. This step usually takes 1-2 minutes.
Once the butter is completely liquid, lower the heat to medium/medium-low. The temperature will depend upon your stove and type of pan you are using.
You will see the butter start to foam (kind of large-ish bubbles), and percolate gently like a witch’s cauldron. Keep stirring! It will take another 3-4 minutes to get to this point. If your butter is kind of boiling, lower the heat so it’s a gentle simmer.
The bubbles will go from large to tiny, so you’ll have a white layer of foam, with liquid butter underneath. Keep stirring! This sometimes takes 5-10 minutes, just scrape up the bits from the bottom and look at them. For now, they should still be white/yellow bits.
The large bubbly foam is back! Keep stirring! You are very close to brown butter ghee! Scrape up the bits from the bottom to see what color they are, gauge the color to how you like your toast.
Smell the ghee, does it smell nutty or does it just smell like butter? If it smells nutty and the milk solids are as brown as you like, STOP and remove the ghee from the stove. If it doesn’t smell nutty, keep going, but you may want to lower the heat to medium-low to avoid burning the milk solids, BUT keeping the heat around medium helps create the brown bits. This can take another 5-10 minutes, so be patient! If you’re worried about burning the milk solids, it’s fine to stop early, you will still have great ghee.
Strain the ghee into a heat proof container. I use a fine mesh sieve without cheesecloth, and strain into a Pyrex measuring cup and let it cool. If you do not have a fine mesh strainer, use a coffee filter or cheesecloth to catch all the milk solids. The hot ghee will have a dark amber/maple color, but when cooled, it will lighten up to a light beige color (like beeswax/cocoa butter).
From 16 ounces of butter, you’ll end up with about 12 ounces of ghee! You can store ghee on the counter, but since I live in Hawaii, I store mine in the fridge, and stab out what I need with a fork (refrigerated ghee is not that hard, but a spoon won’t work).
TIPS
It’s best to use grass-fed organic butter, but hey, I use the Costco Kirkland brand because that’s what is in my price range.
I use unsalted butter because it is difficult to gauge the amount of salt in butter, so you may end up with really salty ghee if you use salted. Some people have no problems, but I like to err on the side of my wallet, and use unsalted.
Using a light bottomed sauce pan makes it much easier to see when the milk solids are starting to brown. If you don’t have one, use a light colored spoon or silicone spatula to scoop up the solids off the bottom, so you can check them.