Those who are dairy free like me (😢😭) may be able to tolerate ghee as it is pure fat with none of the proteins or lactose. Yum! Hey, our bodies must have fats to make hormones, which run every action in our body. Talking more about this may be a deep dive with a future herb – stay tuned. Ghee contains no allergenic milk proteins or lactose and is super easy to make. Ghee is shelf stable and is softer than butter, as a rule. When you need hard ghee to use in say, a gluten free or dairy free pie crust, simply spoon the measured amount of ghee on a plate, pop it in the fridge and give it a couple hours to harden. Viola!
I’ve bought ghee in the stores and it never tastes good to me. It always seems a bit “off,” and I don’t want to put that in my body. A quick internet search showed me how easy it is to make my own. Depending on what I’m using it for, I usually use up 2 sticks (pre-making the ghee) worth of ghee a week.
Homemade Ghee
Ingredients
- 2 sticks of high-quality butter
- culinary herbs (optional for compound ghee)
Instructions
- Unwrap 2 sticks or an 8 ounce block of butter of choice and place them in a large saucepan. I use either organic butter or the Kerrygold, because.... the flavor of that Irish butter can't be beat!
- Turn the heat on medium until the butter melts, then turn it to medium low.
- In about 6-10 minutes, you'll notice the butter begins to foam. Watch it to make sure it doesn't go over the pan and make a mess of your stove...ask me how many times I've forgotten that step.
- Turn down the heat to low.
- When the foam simmers down and when you tip the pan, you can see the milk proteins stuck on the bottom of the pan, it's time to strain.
- Strain the finished ghee in several layers of nut milk bags laid over a strainer into a pyrex bowl or measuring cup. You may see some free floating sediment at the bottom as you pour. Carefully pour the ghee to not allow the sediment to go into the bowl/cup. I pour the sediment into a little bowl for my husband to use on his toast. He can eat anything.
- Store your finished ghee in a fancy jar.
When the ghee is done, I get my cast iron pan heating, add a tablespoon of the ghee in the pan and crack one my chickens’ eggs into it. Then I pop a piece of gluten free bread in the toaster and pour the ghee from the cast iron pan and the egg onto the toast. A bit of Celtic sea salt and nutritional yeast completes the meal.
Your finished ghee will take a few hours to solidify. When it does, you can spoon some in a bowl, mix in your finely minced herbs and flowers, then spoon the herb infused ghee into little bowls or butter molds to pop in the fridge to harden.
I put compound ghee in my stews and soups in my serving bowls, “getting the medicine to the people in ways they’ll enjoy taking, so that healing can occur.”
My husband loves my cooking and looks forward to dinner every day when he comes home from work. He eats a wide variety of herbs with every dinner and doesn’t even know it. I don’t have to give him the recipes, I just care that he’s fed a nourishing meal and he’s a happy eater.
Win/win! ♥
