Ghee: Making Everything Taste Better

At first glance, ghee is just butter that’s been cooked a little longer. In practice, though, it’s the thing responsible for some of the richest, most comforting flavours in Indian cooking.

Today, we’re going to be shining the spotlight on an oft-overlooked ingredient in ghee. You’ve probably had it more times than you realise, though usually its presence only really announces itself through a certain richness to whatever dish, most likely Indian, that you’re eating.

You’ve probably caught whiffs of it rising from your plate of briyani, the smell whipping you into a frenzy before you feverishly and maniacally dug in, or maybe you were hypnotised by its toasted, buttery aroma, gently cloaking the air as the artful hands manning the bread station at your local mamak wove their magic spells.

A lot of people don’t really know what ghee is beyond “that thing that makes food taste good”, but it’s an ingredient that deserves to be accorded far more importance than that. It’s a vital component of Indian culture, where you’ll find it used for cooking, traditional medicine, and Hindu religious rituals, among other things.

Perhaps the most stripped-back way to see what kind of difference ghee can make to your food is to go to your local mamak and order a ghee thosai. Compare this to your regular thosai and see how the difference makes itself immediately apparent. You’ll find the edges develop more of a hardened crackle, while the centre feels richer and almost custard-like, in a way. Your fingers come away carrying traces of the faintly buttery aroma that whispers immensely compelling suggestions of another round. Nothing against regular thosai, as it will always have its place in my heart (hopefully not literally), but the addition of ghee is an undeniable elevation.

Having said that, ghee is so much more than what it does to your thosai. If you’ve ever had a really good murtabak or an exceptional briyani, chances are ghee had something to do with it. It’s something you can usually smell before you taste: a warm, nutty, almost caramel-like presence that hangs heavier in the air than regular butter.

Alright, so we all know it makes food taste good, but what exactly is ghee? Ghee is, despite its ostensible exoticism, really just clarified butter. I say it’s “just clarified butter”, but in all actuality, it’s this one simple process that changes its characteristics almost entirely. You see, butter is made up of roughly 80% milkfat, along with water and milk solids. Ghee, on the other hand, is made by simmering butter until the water evaporates and the milk solids separate out. Those solids are then allowed to caramelise lightly before being strained away, leaving behind only pure butterfat.

Making a batch of ghee from butter is actually a fairly simple process you can pull off in your kitchen in under 20 minutes. As you cook the butter, you’ll find its facets slowly beginning to warp. The bubbling starts to quiet down, and the kitchen, which smelled so creamy before, begins to take on a more roasted turn. This olfactory substitution is heralded by the milk solids at the bottom of the pot taking on a beautiful shade of golden brown.

Where butter in its unadulterated form is creamy and rich, with a little bit of sweetness to it, ghee takes on a deeper sort of nuttiness on its journey through the fire, and this only serves to dial up the richness even further. We all love cooking with butter when we can; it imparts the kind of flavour cooking oil never could, but the issue with that is because butter contains milk solids, it tends to burn pretty quickly. Try cooking a steak entirely in butter, and you’ll find the butter giving in well before the steak does.

Ghee, though, has shed its milk solids-induced vulnerability and, as a result, obtained an incredibly high smoke point of around 250°C. It’s this hardiness that makes it perfect for high-heat sautéing, searing, and frying without burning, all while carrying that unmistakable richness into whatever it is that you’re cooking.

For something that can be boiled down to… butter that’s been boiled down… ghee has quite the outsized presence indeed. If you needed any more convincing, start cooking with ghee today and revel in how it perfumes an entire kitchen, clings sultrily to flatbreads, enriches your curries, and somehow makes food feel warmer and heavier in all the best possible ways. There’s a reason it’s viewed with a kind of reverence in certain quarters, as few ingredients do so much while asking for so little of our attention.

Opening image: Sahibs Biryani | Pexels