How to make pure Ghee from milk

Ghee from cow milk is distinctly yellow. Preparations from buffalo milk have no colour since this animal impart little carotene to their milk. Ghee is 99.5 percent fat. It also contains some fat-soluble vitamins. As a source of energy, it is like any other fat. Ghee contains a small quantity of essential fatty acids. On long keeping, ghee becomes rancid due to the atmospheric oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids. The rancidity in ghee, due to hydrolysis, is not very common as the presence of moisture in ghee is low.

The household production of ghee in India is exclusively by fermenting whole milk into dahi (curd), churning the curd into butter, and boiling down the latter to ghee. Industrially, ghee is made by separating the cream from milk by a mechanical separator, fermenting it, churning it into butter, followed by its conversion to ghee. Alternatively, cream is directly clarified to give ghee. With proper care and control, the curd-butter route gives excellent quality ghee. This is done by using boiled or pasteurized milk in curd making and seeding it with the right type and quality of organisms at the proper temperature, fermenting it to proper acidity, churning under right conditions and proper storage of butter, if this is unavoidable.

In the preparation of ghee, butter obtained from curd or fermented cream is heated in a pan over a low fire. At about 90°C, it begins to boil when it is gently stirred. After most of the water has boiled away, the temperature rises, and at about 120°C the curd particles begin to brown, and a pleasant aroma of caramelization emanates. This is taken as the end of the clarifica- tion process. The fat layer is then carefully removed from solid curd or by straining ghee through a muslin cloth or a strainer and allowed to cool and crystallize. In the direct cream process, cream obtained from milk is mixed with an equal volume of water and reseparated. It is then heated, as in the case of butter, to obtain ghee.