Leftovers from ghee making

I was lucky enough to get my hands on 3 milk crates full of butter for free (the pallet got dropped or bunged up), and I knew it wouldn't keep for long unless I made ghee out of it. Now I've got about 6 quart jars full of the foam skimmings (it was a LOT of butter), and the stuff left on the bottom of the pan. Anybody got any good ideas what to do with it? We don't eat much in the way of sweets around here, so the Indian sweets are not really a viable option. I'm thinking of using it when I make bread for extra protein and flavor. Any other ideas will be much appreciated.

It was my first time making ghee, and probably the last, as we have enough to last us a lifetime (LOL). Supposedly, ghee lasts a really long time (like years) if you keep it in a cool dark place. Can anyone with ghee experience tell me if that's true?

I'm going to have to get out the serious degreaser for the mess I made in the kitchen.

Hey Maya!
I don't have  a good answer to your question, just an interest in the answer and more questions!
I just made ( a much smaller amount of) Ghee, and I'm not sure if I did it right.
Mine is brown and  solid, the stuff in the store is yellow and liquid- how did yours turn out?

As for the uses of the skimmed foam, etc, I found them to be tasty and buttery, and I just use the on vegetables.
Of course , I'm not sure if I did the process correctly, so...

William Bronson wrote:Hey Maya!
I don't have  a good answer to your question, just an interest in the answer and more questions!
I just made ( a much smaller amount of) Ghee, and I'm not sure if I did it right.
Mine is brown and  solid, the stuff in the store is yellow and liquid- how did yours turn out?

As for the uses of the skimmed foam, etc, I found them to be tasty and buttery, and I just use the on vegetables.
Of course , I'm not sure if I did the process correctly, so...

The oil that went into the jar was a rich gold. The skimmings started out white, and finally ended up a darker off white. The stuff in the bottom of the pan was the consistency of runny cottage cheese (or yogurt?), with bits of brown here and there, from the caramelized lactose, I imagine. The final product that ended up in the jar was darker than what I've bought at the store, but not brown by any stretch of the imagination. How did you cook yours?

I started off on low, then when it all melted, I brought it up to a low medium to get it to boil really well, then turned it back down to the lowest setting, stirred it, scraping the bottom. Then I just left it alone, except for periodically (about every 30 mins to an hour) coming back to skim off the foam. Once it got to the point where it was so clear (albeit yellow) and the crust that was forming was, well, crusty, and I could see every detail on the bottom of the pan, I poured it off into quart jars. Then I scraped the bottom of the pan off, put the results into my skimmings jar, and started the process over again.

Not sure about the foam from the top, but the stuff from the bottom is going to taste like concentrated butter flavoring. Use it sparingly, but it can be used in baked goods, on mashed or baked potatoes, and anywhere else you want a strong butter flavor. If you can get most of the fat out of it, you could mix it with salt and sprinkle it on popcorn.

lucky you, what a find!!!
we always just mix it with sugar and eat it like that.

if i weren`t eating sweets, i would totally use it to amp up flavor in things like savory oatmeal, maybe make a savory cinnamon-roll type bread and put that in as a filling with some scallions and sesame seeds....

I make ghee all the time, and I make medicated (herbal infused ghee) as well (as in Ayurveda). But I start with making heavy whipping cream made into yogurt first,  then whip the 'yogurt' cream into butter, with the remaining buttermilk being heavenly (takra) and wonderful for the gut. (old way)

I don't skim the top, but let the solids fall to the bottom and get dark golden brown. The ghee and solids should smell toasted, but definitely not burnt. The milk solids can be eaten as a snack or fed to pets. At first, the cooking ghee will have big bubbles as the water boils out, then goes quieter with just foam and small bubbles. Be careful of not burning the ghee and bottom solids at this time, stirring often, going slow.

Some people use a crockpot. If your ghee is grainy, it has just cooled too slowly. You can re-melt the ghee by running the closed jar under hot water, then sticking it in the fridge for faster cool. If the ghee starts turning white and has an off smell, it has gone bad.

Nancy Phillips wrote:I make ghee all the time, and I make medicated (herbal infused ghee) as well (as in Ayurveda).

Me too.  We use ghee everyday.

I make it using plain, unsalted, organic butter* which I melt over a medium low heat until all the water has evaporated and the solids have fallen to the bottom.  When it goes quiet, you need to catch it before it turns brown as otherwise it will have a burnt slightly rancid unpleasant taste. It should smell clean and fresh and have a warm, yellow colour.

There are lots of recipes online which suggest that a long cooking time is needed but I make it according to the ayurvedic recipe I was taught some years ago which usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour. I make it in small batches or 3 or 4 blocks of butter in case the batch does not go well or if the butter is not the best quality (spring butter works best).  I do skim the top but never stir it.

There seem to be two schools of thought about the skimmings and the solids: one is that this is where the impurities end up and so it should be discarded.  The other is that it is nutritious and can be used as a tasty treat.    

We use the solids as salad crumbles or as a treat for the dog.  If I could still eat carbs, I would be experimenting with mixing them with oat flour, oats and salt to make oat biscuits/crisps.

Maya, your bread-making idea sounds very interesting.  Do report back if you try it - there's nothing better than a kitchen experiment:)

As far as storage goes, the most important thing is to make sure that you get the water out otherwise it can go rancid or moldy.  I keep mine at about 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) in a dark barn. The ghee is kept in old glass screw top apple sauce jars to exclude air.    

The longest I have kept it is one year but lots of people have kept it much longer on this thread:

Ghee shelf life

Just for fun,  it's good to know butter can also be preserved in a acidic medium without air for hundreds if not thousand of years.  

Bog Butter

And yes,  I would taste it.  


*we used to be able to get French cultured butter which is made from soured cream and lactic acid cultures and is more like the recipe Nancy uses above.  It did make the best ghee. Now I just use British organic butter as the other dairy I can get eg creme fresh, is very expensive and most of it is already too processed for me.  

EDIT: Just to clarify (see what I did there) when making ghee this way, the milk solids do turn brown and caramelise at the bottom of the pan and yes, the finished product does smell a bit nutty.  If the butter is taken off the heat and strained when the solids have separated out but before they turn brown that is clarified butter.  

Congrats on your first big batch of ghee! Sounds like you did really well.

In a class I took with Goddess Ghee I learned to look at ghee making as a purification process where the "impurities" (ie: water, lactose & casein) are removed from the butter to make a pure oil. What is left in the pan when ghee is finished is concentrated lactose and casein. This could upset the stomach for those who are sensitive to dairy in this way and I just want to point that out. In my opinion, the leftovers are probably best for the compost pile. I've tried at times to save and utilize the stuff from the bottom of the pan, but never really found it to be very appealing. The prime stuff is the ghee you just made and for good reason. It's beneficial for gut health, rich in fat-soluble vitamins and has a high smoke point.

I can not speak to how long ghee will last because I use it up too quickly! I do refrigerate my ghee when I make my own, even though I know I don't need to. I also keep my ghee refrigerated when I open a new jar to help preserve the flavor. Moisture will cause ghee to spoil, so I aim to keep my ghee at an even temperature as much as possible, even when open.

Ghee should have a long shelf-life if all the water has been evaporated from the butter. A good way to know you've accomplished this is to caramelize the solids at the bottom of the pan. By that point, all the moisture should have evaporated. This also gives the ghee a really great nutty flavor and brown color. I've done batches where I didn't cook the butter as long and the final ghee was golden yellow in color, more akin to clarified butter. I will say, in comparison, I don't think those batches tasted as good and didn't keep as well even when refrigerated. They seemed to go off in flavor a lot quicker.

Bulletproof coffee!  I use about a tablespoon a day for a big french press of coffee.  Blended about 30 seconds.  So yummy.

I make ghee because I can't tolerate the cassein protein = I discard the bottom-of-the-pan stuff.  Am writing to just say it's not necessary to skim the foam during the process, because it is the water boiling off and will soon be gone.  When the foam is all gone and you can see the bottom of the pan through the clear ghee, it's time to pour out of the pan.  If all the milk solids haven't settled, straining will catch them, but you have clarified butter.  More cooking will get you to ghee.

I use Ghee in Bulletproof Coffee.
About 1 tablespoon per 12-16 oz coffee.
Also I usually add a little coconut oil, teaspoon cacao, 1/4 tsp stevia powder,
and dash of ceylon cinnamon powder.

Put everything into a blender and add boiling hot coffee.
Blend at least one minute and serve immediately or store in a thermos for later.

A friend of mine here made ghee as an experiment as part of developing his local packaged food products business. Ghee is not traditional in my part of India, but he made it with an Indian friend who was from a ghee-loving part of India, but that said, I imagine they got their instructions from the internet. I don't know what process they used, but it was a rich golden color, yes. I think he kept it in a storage place that gets hot every day in summer, in jam jars. When it was sitting there over a year old I noticed he wasn't using it and asked if I could take it. It was good for a while -- makes amazing popcorn for example -- but after a while it started getting rancid, kinda cheesy. I couldn't even make popcorn with it anymore: the smoke would choke up the kitchen.

Since you are making so much you will need to store it for years, so my recommendation (just guessing but I do know it can go off) would be to really make sure it's purified (sounds like you've done that), and do make sure to store it cool or cold.

Hi! I can't believe I missed this post!

We get rid of the leftover from ghee. We figure if we are filtering it out, we likely don't want to eat it.

That being said, we ONLY use ghee. We'll, mostly.

Everything we fry, bake or spread generally has ghee on it or in it.

It is shelf stable for a long time as long as the water is out, and nothing contaminates it. I have it on the shelf for well over a year at times.

I make mine in a crock pot these days. Simple and requires no supervision.

Mmmmm ghee!

Well, I tried making bread with it. Flavor wasn't really a whole lot different, but the texture was. The bread was really really rich. So, 1/2 cup of ghee leavings for a 2 loaf recipe turned out really well, unless you're a fan of fluffy white bread, which I am not. When I have two pieces of toast, I want to know that I've had something to eat.  I also put in a cup of soaked 5 grain cereal into my mix. So, the skimmings and leavings jars definitely won't go to waste.

One batch of ghee I made didn't separate into oil and solids.  The whole batch was nutty crumbles.  I had used salted butter vs unsalted.

Jennifer Markestad wrote:One batch of ghee I made didn't separate into oil and solids.  The whole batch was nutty crumbles.  I had used salted butter vs unsalted.

Thanks, this is interesting. I was thinking of making some ghee myself for the first time. Where I live, commercial salted butter is easy to come by, but local homemade unsalted butter is a bit harder to get. But of course I know the local homemade homegrown butter is better, and now you've convinced me.

Hmmm... I'm willing to bet those little 'cracklins' would be incredibly yummy, mixed into some homemade butter pecan or French vanilla ice cream... OR, this time of year(in the northern hemisphere, anyway) into some snow cream!

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:\ you could mix it with salt and sprinkle it on popcorn.

If you used salted butter you don't need to add salt.  At all!  The salt concentrates in the settled stuff.  

Since I tend to make ghee in small batches, I will just eat the solids once I’m done. Yes, it is a process of refinement and purification, but so is making white flour and white rice, and there is much to lose by discarding the bran.

Another milk byproduct I have made is by concentrating yogurt whey by simmering. Beginning after maybe a third of the water evaporates, the sliminess disappears, and is replaced by an intense and delicious flavor. It’s maybe something like mysost, and the only use I’ve figured out so far is to spread it on crackers. But if it goes too long, past the paste stage, it turns glassy and sticks to things very firmly. It could be very useful as a glue once it gets to that point, though.