Clarified butter or Ghee

In India we usually prepare ghee out of whole milk cream which involves churning of the cream into butter and then cooking butter on flame till it forms ghee along with residue.

Same process we can do with non salted ready made butter,here I used Arla's Smör unsalted butter to prepare ghee( it is pure liquid golden-yellow butterfat).

Ghee or clarified butter has advantages over normal butter i.e. its long keeping quality (several months refrigerated) and its high smoke point (can be used in frying without burning)

Ingredients:

1 kg Arla or any other brand unsalted butter packs

a deep heavy bottomed pan

Method:

Gently melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pan over low heat until the butter breaks down and three layers form.  The top layer is a white foam or froth , the milk solids will drop to the bottom of the pan and the middle one is a pure golden-yellow liquid called clarified butter.  

When it has stopped bubbling, remove the pan from the heat.

 Let the butter sit a few minutes to allow the milk solids to further settle to the bottom, and then strain the mixture through a fine sieve or  a cheesecloth-lined strainer or simply a clean new cotton handkerchief will do.  

For me I got almost  750 gms of ghee out of 1 ltr butter.

The liquid collected is the golden-yellow clarified butter (ghee) that can be stored for several months in an air tight container.  Chilled clarified butter does become grainy.

Notes:

-Be very careful not to overheat the butter or it will become bitter in taste.

-If you store fresh milk cream in freezer then it wont turn sour for many days or months.whenever you have enough cream to draw ghee take it out, let it melt to room temperature and then you can start with the process of churning etc.

 -If the milk residue is not too brown or just pink in color then you can use it as khoya or mawa in sweets.