Homemade Ghee Recipe: Making Indian Clarified Butter w/ Dr. Shalini Bhat

Make homemade ghee in minutes

Key Recipe Steps and Time Stamps

0:10 One cub of unsalted butter
0:18 Medium heat to melt the butter
0:36 Three l ayers of butter (before it turns to ghee)
0:50 Why you should’t stir butter during the ghee making process
0:57 How to know when your ghee is ready (the milk solids turn a caramel color
1:06 What Ghee looks like when it’s almost ready
1:25 This is what it sounds like when your ghee is close to being ready
1:48 Your butter is almost clarified when it looks like this
1:57 When Ghee is ready, it looks like this
2:15 Taking milk solids out of ghee
2:31 Filtering your ghee
2:57 Adding salt to your ghee

Recipe by Dr. Shalini Bhat

Shalini is a Toronto-based Functional Medicine practitioner. This ghee recipe is inspired by her family members in India.

Connect with by Dr. Bhat

www.themovementboutique.ca

www.instagram.com/themovementboutique

Still paying $12 for a tiny jar of ghee? Learn how to make it yourself, the traditional Indian way w/ Dr. Shalini Bhat @themovementboutique. (Click link in bio for the full vid + recipe!) #ghee #gheebutter #keto #lowcarb #microbiome #functionalmedicine #recipe #realfood #jerf #jerfing #ketogenic #clarifiedbutter #lchf

A post shared by Mike Mutzel, MS (@metabolic_mike) on Feb 18, 2017 at 10:11am PST

Full Video Transcript

Mike Mutzel:
Thanks for tuning in to another video today. We're going to make ghee with Dr. Shalini Bhat. It's really interesting because we have the ghee right here and she's going to share with us how simple and easy it is. While we're cooking it we're going to talk about some of the uses in traditional culture. How ghee is used. Why it's holy and much more.

Shalini, thanks so much for coming on. Let's dive into it.

Shalini Bhat:
Thanks so much for having me. We're going to get a cube here of unsalted butter. Make sure you're using unsalted butter. We'll just take this whole thing.

Mike Mutzel:
Grass fed, right?

[00:00:30]
Shalini Bhat:

Grass fed, absolutely. Then we're going to put this in the pot. When you're melting it you can put it on medium, medium-high just to get it melted. I'll put that on medium high and we'll just wait for that brick to melt before the magic happens. You can see I'm putting some on my skin.

Mike Mutzel:
Oh yeah. Let's talk about the skin aspect. We talked about like in Western culture people are putting coconut oil everywhere, right?

Shalini Bhat:
Yeah.

Mike Mutzel:
But in Indian cultures and aromatic medicine, ghee is like the coconut. What's up with that?

[00:01:00]
Shalini Bhat:

It is yeah. It's actually so funny because everyone is putting coconut oil on everything and we do that as well in India but ghee, like you mentioned in our Avada is holy and we're putting it on everything. It's got a lot of the similar properties as coconut oil. It's very high heat so you can use it for 400 degree cooking. It's shelf stable. I've got one from yesterday so you can see it solidifies at room temp just like coconut oil.

Mike Mutzel:
[00:01:30]
Just pause real quick. I like that you keep it out. I learned that tip from you because I was putting mine … We've been putting ours in the fridge forever because that's where you put butter and it's not as enjoyable when you put it in the fridge.

Shalini Bhat:

[00:02:00]
And you're scraping it … That really hard substance. Actually it's because you're burning off all the water or evaporating all the water. The water is the reason for the moisture that can attract mold and that kind of thing. Since you're evaporating off all the water it becomes shelf stable. You can keep ghee as is. Usually it would have a lid but I use my ghee a lot so I don't really need to put the lid on it because I'm using it everyday at least two or three times a day.

If you're not using it as frequently you'll want to make sure you use it up in about three months. That makes a good point of how much butter you want to put into make your ghee, knowing within three to six months should be okay.

Mike Mutzel:
Don't make too much.

Shalini Bhat:
Don't make too much if you're … but you should be eating it so you should be making more.

Mike Mutzel:
It takes you three months to get through your ghee somethings wrong.

[00:02:30]
Shalini Bhat:

Exactly. It only makes this much, right? As it melts, you'll notice it will become three layers. At the bottom, milk solids will start to fall. In the middle will be that nice clarified butter that we're going for. At the top here it's still milk solids that are kind of coming up as well as the water and it's going to evaporate. You can see if I move this spoon gently it should start to clarify underneath there. A lot of people are stirring, stirring, stirring. Traditionally we don't stir it. We just leave it.

Mike Mutzel:
You've looked at other tutorials and they do recommend stirring and all these other …

[00:03:00]
Shalini Bhat:

[00:03:30]

It was funny. I actually hadn't seen how anyone else makes ghee. I've just seen my mom and my aunts and stuff back home. People kind of just leave it, but on tutorials people were stirring or they were not waiting until … One of the best parts about ghee, about the flavor profile is waiting until those milk solids turn a little bit of a caramel color and it's at that aromatization that your all of a sudden like, “oh that smell”, that nutty, that buttery smell. They don't wait till that and they were taking it off beforehand and so the milk solids were still white. We want to make sure they are coming to the bottom and really getting into that golden color as well.

Mike Mutzel:
Let's talk about back home. You mentioned your mom and your aunts and so forth. Where exactly in India is that?

Shalini Bhat:
It's my father who's originally from India. They're from Karala area, so South India. They live on a spice farm.

Mike Mutzel:
Awesome.

Shalini Bhat:
[00:04:00]
My dad grew up on this huge rain forest spice farm. When my mom moved to India after they got married my mom learned all the Indian cooking. Ghee was one of the things that I grew up eating.

Mike Mutzel:
That's amazing. Here we go. It's starting to really boil now.

Shalini Bhat:
Yeah, so it's starting to really boil now so I'm just going to turn it down. It was at kind of a medium high. I'm going to just bring it to just shy of medium. One of the keys in making ghee is the sound of it. We've got this loud bubbling happening and we'll kind of know when it's done when that ceases.

[00:04:30]
Mike Mutzel:

I can see why some people get intimidated by that because you mentioned the sound and now it's like an intuitive kind of subjective thing. People want to know the temperature, the recipe, the protocol.

Shalini Bhat:
My answer. The most wonderful Indian chefs you've ever met and you'll say, “How did you make this?” And they'll say a “pinch” of this. You're like … I remember learning from them … Is that tablespoons, teaspoons? What is it? And they're free handing it.

Mike Mutzel:
The sound is definitely changing.

[00:05:00]
Shalini Bhat:

Yeah. So the sound will change. As we were seeing just in that last time, it's kind of clarifying so you can see those milk solids are either rising to the top and if we were able to see the bottom through the butter, if I just scoot it to the side you can see there will be some milk solids at the bottom as well.

Mike Mutzel:
As a functional medicine practitioner, we have people that are gluten sensitive, dairy sensitive and all that. Do you feel pretty comfortable teaching them this recipe and having, even if they are dairy sensitive, having them eat this? No problems?

[00:05:30]
Shalini Bhat:

Great question. Yeah, the casein and the lactose are for sure being … Those are those milk solids that are either rising or burning to the bottom. I would say if someone has- Oh, so here we go. See how it's changing sound? It's becoming quiet? You can sort of see around the edges there is a little bit of golden color? Those bubbles are also becoming a bit of a froth now so it's not those rapid bubbles. It's just becoming a quiet foam.

[00:06:00]
I had turned it down but now that it's starting to go silent I'm going to go off. The heat that's left in the pot will caramelize the rest of the milk proteins, milk solids towards the bottom. You'll be able to see the clarifying butter left over.

Mike Mutzel:
It's interesting Shalini. I travel quite a bit. I've always been more comfortable bringing coconut oil with me for whatever reason, but since ghee doesn't need to be refrigerated and it's hard to get and it's way more expensive than coconut oil, I'm going to start traveling with ghee.

[00:06:30]
Shalini Bhat:

[00:07:00]

For sure you'd need a lid. Like my method. You can see as this starts to cool a little bit, you can see the clarification underneath so we can sort of see through. You can see those little bubbles at the top, that's just water still evaporating. In here those are still some milk solids. We're going to be straining those anyway. We're leaving it now. We've taken it off the heat anyway so a lot of that will still fall to the bottom. The milk solids, yeah. The remnants of the dairy so to finish answering your question.

Mike Mutzel:
Kind of the bad stuff goes …

Shalini Bhat:

[00:07:30]
Yeah, exactly. If someone per se was allergic anaphylaxis or something, no I'm not going to risk it. If someone was dairy sensitive, I would feel confident once they teach them how to make it. Then of course, like anything, if they try it and they don't react well to it then no. People with a sensitivity should be absolutely fine with it. What I would say to them is do an extra step which I will show you when we filter.

[00:08:00]
I'll just scoot this to the side here and we can see that gorgeous clarified butter and at the bottom those golden, kind of brown, milk solids. It's very important not to burn ghee. You want to make sure that you are turning it off right when I said, when that sound stopped. Otherwise these solids at the bottom, they become burnt. Then it changes the flavor profile and we don't want that. We also don't want to take it off before this has become this color because it changes the flavor profile as well.

Mike Mutzel:
So we have milk solid on top and on bottom?

Shalini Bhat:

[00:08:30]
Not really any more. You have a couple of milk solids just around the edges but they're kind of crusting to the pot. That's why you just leave it to sit. They'll all fall or attach to the side. Then we do a filtering process so I'll show you how to filter it in a minute.

Mike Mutzel:
How long would you let this sit for?

Shalini Bhat:

[00:09:00]
I got a number … I always just subjectively look at it but I mean, five minutes maybe or so. Once you've turned the heat off I'd say about five to seven minutes. You'll see, you'll be able to see it's more clear. When we first turned the heat off it was still foamy on the top. As you wait your five or seven minutes … It doesn't matter, you can wait 10 minutes at this point. It's not going to cook more because you've removed it from the heat anyways. You're safe waiting, going to do another errand and coming back to filter it.

Mike Mutzel:
Really what we're looking for at the end is like this little spot right here to kind of … That consistency would kind of encompass the whole surface?

Shalini Bhat:
You got it. Or most of … Like this is probably as good … This will do a little bit more but this is pretty much as good as it's going to get. The one thing though, as I just said, go do an errand and come back, you can't because it will solidify. We … I meant like a 10 minute task or something.

[00:09:30]
Mike Mutzel:

Set your iPhone timer for 10 minutes and go …

Shalini Bhat:
It's not going to solidify at 10 minutes, but just like coconut oil, it'll be solid at room temperature.

Mike Mutzel:
So a couple roadblocks for people who, “I don't want to clean. I don't want to do this stuff,” it looks like this is getting sticky to the pan. This is not a non stick pan, right?

Shalini Bhat:
No, this is a ceramic pot. I would hope everybody has ceramic or stainless steel and they're not using non stick.

Mike Mutzel:
Yeah, that's frustrating.

Shalini Bhat:
[00:10:00]
It's actually not that bad. While it's still hot I just put it in the water and then you just take a sponge. It's not bad cleanup.

Mike Mutzel:
Not like eggs on a non stick where you've got to put some elbow grease into it?

Shalini Bhat:

[00:10:30]
No it's definitely easier to come off. Because of the lactose, the sugar, it's like carmalizey. It's not really stuck. From this phase … Again, we mentioned if you're super dairy sensitive and mindful of that, you could take this little bit of scum and take it out if you wanted to. You could also do that with a sieve if you wanted to. Again, if you were really concerned about the dairy you might want a little coffee filter on here as well.

Mike Mutzel:
As an extra layer.

Shalini Bhat:
Yeah, as an extra layer, but this sieve you'll see it'll catch a lot of it. We're just gonna grab this here and we're just going to pour it through this filter.

Mike Mutzel:
Yummy.

[00:11:00]
Shalini Bhat:

You can see this filter does a really good job in and of itself catching everything. The other thing I will tell you, once it actually sits … So, if we look at this one from yesterday you can see at the bottom, there is just a little bit of that brown and that's because I was lazy and used this sieve. If you actually used a coffee filter it would have got absolutely everything.

Mike Mutzel:
If you're very dairy sensitive you would not eat the bottom of your ghee?

Shalini Bhat:
[00:11:30]

[00:12:00]
No, you just use coffee filter at this phase of filtering. Then it will catch everything for you. A non chlorinated coffee filter too. You can see we have this nice golden color and this is what it looks like now. It will turn this yellow color once it solidifies. For flavor, the last thing I do is take a pinch of pink Himalayan salt and I just put it in to the ghee because as you know we used unsalted butter. The reason that is is so that it doesn't burn. You just stir it in. It really adds to the flavor of the ghee. That also helps preserve it a little bit longer. We spoke about people who should be but may not eating their ghee off that quickly, it just adds that one little element of preservation.

Mike Mutzel:
That's a traditional thing in India, right? To put the salt in?

Shalini Bhat:
It depends on what flavor. If they want it for other reasons or something, but yeah, generally.

Mike Mutzel:
This looks yummy Shalini. Can we dive right into it or do we need to let it cool?

[00:12:30]
Shalini Bhat:

No, we can dive right into it. You can have it for cooking … You can use such a small amount with ghee it's just like coconut oil. It really gets everything nice and oily so to speak versus olive oil which might start burning off and stuff. You just need a little, goes a long way for those who may care. It will turn to this. You can see this after when it turns yellow, it's not gone bad and it solidifies and becomes kind of grainy a little bit too.

Mike Mutzel:
[00:13:00]
I think we talked about it earlier, but just to reinforce people. It's safe to leave out because we've got the moisture out of there so bugs are not going to grow. We added salt which can help with that too but it tastes much better when it's not frozen … or in the freezer, or refrigerator, right?

Shalini Bhat:
Or taking the time with your arm to actually scrape it out. It's definitely … Leave it out and the salt that we put in will definitely if anything, draw any water that was left in it. There wouldn't be any though.

Mike Mutzel:
Your ancestors in India, ghee would just be hanging out in the kitchen? All over, right?

Shalini Bhat:
[00:13:30]
In India there are these little stainless steel jars sort of thing with a stainless steel spoon and that spoon is in there all the time. They are just ready to cook with it and do whatever they're going to do with it.

Mike Mutzel:
It's not only just for cooking but we talked offline a little bit about hair, skin, nails. Using it as coconut oil.

Shalini Bhat:
Yeah exactly. So if anybody has any scaring or if they've got a cut or anything like that you can put a little bit of ghee on it and it's really helpful with healing and stuff like that. Just the way we would use coconut oil, or we know to use it in mainstream right now.

[00:14:00]
Mike Mutzel:

What about for hair. I know if you look on Pinterest there is coconut oil hair treatment for women, same thing with ghee, right?

Shalini Bhat:
Yeah it's the same thing with ghee. You can definitely try it with ghee plus it's holy so it might go that extra step for you.

Mike Mutzel:
Right. If folks want to do like ghee 2.0 with garlic and rosemary and things, do you recommend that? Or would you recommend throwing that in while you're cooking?

Shalini Bhat:

[00:14:30]

[00:15:00]
I would definitely recommend throwing it in while you're cooking. The reason being, you're going to have a … Like I said, a little ghee goes a long way. Let's say you're using a tablespoon per meal or less, a teaspoon. You're going to have a lot of garlic ghee and rosemary ghee and you're going to make a whole bunch of different ones. Whereas in Indian cooking, when you put the ghee in the pan and you let it get hot you put the spices in right away and they actually get really aromatic and flavorful when they're heated with the ghee in the beginning part of the cooking rather than in the North American cooking it's oil then veggies or meats or whatever you're putting in then you season it at the end. I would definitely recommend doing the aromatic spices in the ghee as it's heating up first.

Mike Mutzel:
While you're warming up the pan and melting the butter or the ghee.

Shalini Bhat:
Yeah, exactly.

Mike Mutzel:
Fantastic tips. Shalini Bhat, if folks want to reach out and learn about your clinical practice here in Toronto, how can they connect with you online?

Shalini Bhat:
They can go to my website it's themovementboutique.ca.

Mike Mutzel:

[00:15:30]
What we'll do is just put the link to your website right below this video in the description. We're also going to do a podcast about fascia. If folks want to learn more about fascia please click the link below this video. If you like this video please give it a thumbs up. If you've been making ghee for a while and it's been different from this way, please type in a comment below and share your experience and feedback. As always, I appreciate you tuning in and Dr. Bhat, thanks so much for coming on.

Shalini Bhat:
Thanks so much for having me.