How I Turn Butter Into Liquid Gold—And Why It Makes Everything Taste Better

Of all the advice I've received in my career as a touring musician, it still surprises me that one of the most consequential pieces involved a frying pan. A veteran audio engineer once suggested that when things start getting contentious in the recording studio, the best way to right the ship is to begin cooking onions in butter within smelling distance (noseshot?) of the band. Whether an actual meal is served afterward, I was assured, is immaterial. The purpose of the exercise is anticipation, or at least distraction.

Fifteen years into my band Darlingside's existence—and about a decade into my chosen role as band cook—I can confidently confirm that cooking butter is the best way to lift the collective spirit of a group of moody musicians. The onions, though, are superfluous.

The absurdly simple act of transforming butter into a pot of rich, nutty ghee is barely worth a recipe, but it generates the most delightfully potent olfactory diversion I know.

So...What Is Ghee?

Ghee is a type of clarified butter that's cooked just long enough for the milk solids to brown and develop a nutty, toffee-like flavor. The result is a pure butterfat that's richly aromatic, and shelf-stable. Think of it as butter that's been distilled and deepened in flavor.

Ghee has long been considered a prized medicine in Ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of health and wellness, and several odes and hymns dedicated to it are found in the Rigveda, the most ancient of the Hindu religious texts. Once you've made (and sniffed) some, it's easy to understand the reverence.

To get the most out of your ghee, it helps to understand the science of the sole ingredient. Butter is a stable mixture, or emulsion, of water, butterfat, and milk solids. To make ghee, which is pure butterfat flavored with browned milk solids, the emulsion must first be broken, which happens when the butter is heated. The water boils off, and then the milk solids (proteins, sugars, and minerals) separate from the butterfat, either floating to the top as foam or sinking to the bottom.

The Secret to Perfectly Fragrant Ghee

The key to making proper, fragrant ghee, rather than just clarified butter (also known as pure butterfat), is to ensure the separated milk solids are brown and toasty before the ghee is poured off. This extra cooking step imparts an exquisite, butterscotch-like aroma to the fat. 

To get started, melt unsalted butter over medium heat in a small, heavy-bottomed pot. Within a few minutes, the butter will hiss and sputter as its water content boils away, then turn quiet and clear as the milk solids separate. You'll see a layer of foam rise to the surface while the solids begin to collect and darken on the bottom of the pan. The transformation happens gradually—until it doesn't.

There's a broad range of acceptable results. You can barely brown the milk solids to produce a pale golden ghee, but you can also crank the flavor all the way up to 11 by cooking the milk solids until they almost blacken, resulting in a pot of melted ghee the color of dark amber honey. That final jump from light gold to deep amber happens fast—just a few minutes, depending on your batch size—so keep a close eye (and nose) on the pot.

When the milk solids reach your desired shade, quickly remove the pot from the heat and strain it immediately to prevent the solids from continuing to overcook. Pour the liquid ghee through a fine-mesh strainer lined with a coffee filter or cheesecloth into a clean, heat-safe jar, leaving the browned bits behind. Those milk solids are gold in their own right, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Two Delicious Rewards for the Price of One

Once you have your pot of ghee, the first thing to do is celebrate the mathematical inversion you've just performed. While most recipes combine multiple ingredients into one dish, here a single ingredient produces two treasures: rich, aromatic butterfat and browned milk solids that taste like caramel crumbs. (That return-on-investment is even more impressive when you consider the brown butter aroma as an additional collateral benefit, which you should.) 

Those browned milk solids are spectacular when mixed into plain rice or yellow daal, but you should also try them with homemade ice cream, popcorn—really, anything that could use a hit of brown butter. It's worth tasting the solids before using them, though, as they can get bitter if overbrowned. If you don't use the solids right away, pop them in the fridge in an airtight container, where they should last for at least a couple of days.

How to Use Ghee in Cooking

You also, of course, have the ghee itself: a shelf-stable super-butter with a smoke point higher than butter and most oils. Ghee keeps for weeks at room temperature—and for months in the fridge—since it contains no milk solids. Once you have a jar on hand, there's no shortage of ways to use it.

While ghee has deep roots in Indian kitchens—where it's used to brush flaky parathas and naan, enrich fragrant biryani, and add a final sizzle of spiced flavor to dal tadka—it's by no means limited to those dishes. Its nutty depth and high smoke point make it exceptionally useful in a range of applications: 

• Searing and sautéing: Use ghee for searing steaks, chicken thighs, or paneer. It's also great for frying eggs with crisp, lacy edges.
• Baking: Swap it in for butter when making shortbread or brown butter chocolate chip cookies for a deeper caramel note.
• Dressing vegetables: Try tossing roasted cauliflower, butternut squash, or carrots in melted ghee for a nutty finish.
• Drizzling: Pour over popcorn, dal, or rice pilaf for instant richness.
• Making sauces: Stir into masala, stir-fries, or pasta sauces when you want silkiness without smoke.

Once you start cooking with it, you'll find yourself reaching for ghee anywhere you'd normally use butter or oil. It also takes beautifully to seasoning. Stir in some salt, and you have an elegant salted butter upgrade for toast or pancakes. If you enjoy flavored butter, ghee's semi-solid consistency at room temperature makes it an excellent candidate for doctoring into a rich spread. Try adding a bit of acid (such as mustard, vinegar, lacto-fermented pickle brine, etc.) in addition to some salt or soy sauce to complement the richness. Be warned that you might start eating it by the spoonful.

A Butter Worth Writing Songs About

Some bands like to burn sage or palo santo before they enter a space to write or record. I'm not opposed to smudging, but having a few sticks of butter in the fridge is far more important to me. I hope you'll try your hand at making ghee at home at least once. I promise it will be worth the effort.