To make ghee, we take grassfed butter, melt and simmer it, and separate the milk solids and water from the fat. What’s left is a pure, high quality fat that’s great to cook, bake, and eat with really anything. Technically, ghee is hyper clarified butter hailing from the Indian subcontinent. To us, ghee is the best all-purpose cooking oil and nectar of the gods!

For one, you can’t sear a steak or cook at high temps without butter burning. Ghee has a much higher smoke point than butter (485 vs. 350). Ghee’s flavor profile is similar to butter’s but a bit nuttier.

We like to think of ghee as hyper-clarified butter. Clarified butter is made from heating the butter until the milk solids separate and removing the milk solids. Ghee is made from heating butter until the milk solids actually caramelize, lending it that delicious, nutty flavor.

Not only is graininess normal, it’s a sign of good ghee. Ghee is comprised of fatty acids that might crystallize during the cooling process. This is completely normal and does not affect the taste or quality of ghee. Many commercial ghee companies produce their ghee in large steam kettles that don’t fully evaporate all of the water and moisture. This might lend to a smoother texture but a higher chance of going rancid, because water breeds bacteria.

Store your ghee in the airtight jar it came in, ideally in a cool and dark place. It is shelf stable for up to 6 months, but it probably won’t last that long. If you want to make it last longer, you can keep it in the fridge for up to a year.

Ghee has a higher smoke point that most oils, meaning that you can cook with it up to high temperatures. It’s also a pure fat — straight from the cow! Unfortunately in today’s world, many oils are cut with lesser quality oils.

But one of the biggest reasons why we love ghee is simple: it tastes otherworldly. It’s all of the best parts of butter (rich and creamy) and then some (nutty and caramelized).

We love to bake with ghee and will use it to replace butter, coconut oil, and more in recipes. Ghee is a 1:1 replacement for both butter, coconut oil — any kind of oil.

We like to say that ghee tastes like butter but better. When we started Empress of Ghee as a small table at the Bozeman farmer’s market, one of our customers referred to our product as super butter, and we think that’s a pretty apt name, too. It’s hard to describe the taste of ghee, but we’ll take a stab: rich, nutty, caramel-y, slightly sweet (with no sugar!).

And that’s just plain ghee. Our unique infusions – masala and saffron — are a whole other story…