What is Ghee & Why It's Better Than Butter?

Ghee is butter with its moisture and nearly all its dairy components such as lactose and casein removed. It is shelf-stable and can last several months without the need to be refrigerated. At Ketogeek, we think of it as supercharged butter and is on a league of its own when it comes to cooking, baking and sauteing. Its applications are endless varying from exotic cuisines to pastry. The main method of making ghee involves low heating the butter and then once the butter clarifies and is free of moisture, the golden oily component or ghee is removed by seaving. 

Aroma & Texture

While butter has a very subtle aroma, Ghee has a very distinct concentrated caramel and toasty smell that depends on how its cooked. The scent is absorbed during its preparation process from and can vary drastically across the board depending on how the butter is cooked. This can add a warmth and rich smell to the recipe. Think toasty butter on popcorn but richer and deeper.

Shelf Stable

Ghee is totally shelf stable and is great for long term storage. Butter requires to be kept in the fridge and spoils within hours outside of controlled temperature settings. It is a great travel companion as well to be taken to camping or mountaineering trips. This is also why we use it as a key ingredient in our Energy Pods.

Smoke Point

Ghee has a smoke point of 485F while butter has a smoke point of 350F. This is ideal for baking and high temperature cooking, including searing a steak. It's one  of the very few natural sources of fats that allow such high temperature cooking.

Dairy Content

Ghee has practically all dairy, lactose and casein content removed from it. This allows it usually to be consumed by people who are intolerant to any dairy content. Butter contains dairy which can be an issue for several people sensitive to milk proteins. Hence, ghee allows such people to experience the delicious taste of butter(we think it tastes way better than butter!) while not facing any negative consequences.

Cooking & Baking

Ghee is easy to work with and since it readily melts, it can be immediately added to any recipe that requires butter. This can be done by using 0.6 to 0.8 per parts of butter to any recipe that requires butter. Therefore, it can not only be used instead of butter but because of its high smoke point, it is far more versatile and much easier to use. 

Fat Content

Ghee is pure fat while butter still has moisture in it. As a side note, we've found that ghee made from hand churned high butterfat butter and good quality butter from pasture-raised cows makes the best ghee. In fact, that's the butter we use to make our Ghee using our own methodology. Additionally, Ghee has higher amount of MCT (rapidly absorbing fats) than butter. Hence, it is a great way to add more fat to your coffee or foods to add that extra fatty and energetic punch. This promotes endogenous production of ketones and keeping you charged up throughout your day!

Conclusion

Overall, we think Ghee is supercharged butter and is far more versatile than butter. However, not all ghee is created equal. In fact, 'clarified butter', sold in many stores isn't actually ghee at all. Clarified butter contains moisture and doesn't have the same aroma and texture as true ghee. Also, after doing rigorous testing, we've concluded that using Ayurvedic method has no influence on the quality of the ghee though some of the steps used in an Ayurvedic method do lead to a high quality ghee. The Ayurvedic chants? They don't play any role in how the ghee tastes. Temperature control and understanding how proteins and fats are affected by such variables is much more important in the quality of ghee, something we like to take very seriously. Overall, we love ghee and is part of our Nutty Carnivore diet and an excellent way to add some fat to the steak.