Learn How to Make Ghee and Enjoy Its Magical Health Benefits

Ghee is often characterized as clarified butter, but ghee is not just clarified butter. Ghee is clarified butter, which is made of pure milk fat. And while ghee is technically just milk fat with all the water and solids removed (i.e. clarified butter), if you make the ghee yourself, it is no longer just clarified butter . . . it’s alive!
 

Ghee gets charged with your energy and your intention when you make it, and can be a powerful healing food.

 
Ghee has been woven into traditional Indian culture and religion over millennia. It is used in fire rituals, in Ayurvedic treatments, and is all-pervading in Indian Cuisine.
 
Richard Freeman says it best in The Mirror of Yoga: “Food can be selected, handled, and prepared as if it were a way of communicating with the beloved, a means of connecting sensually with pure awareness directly through your tastebuds.”
 

Our Sacred Relationship with Food

With the right intention, and through the sacred task of preparing food, you can charge ghee with your energy and produce an energetically enhanced healing food. By reciting a mantra while you make it, you can imbue the ghee with special vibrational frequencies.
 
Food is no longer a mundane fact of life. You can transform it into a mystical and loving relationship – an expression of love between your physical self, and the divine Self within you.
 

Health Benefits of Ghee

Outside of the kitchen, Western science has found that ghee contains powerful substances for our health and wellness. From woman’s health to cancer prevention, boosting your immune system to increasing your sex drive, ghee is incredibly diverse in its range of health benefits.
 

Reduce the Risk of Disease

When made from pasture-raised dairy, pure milk fat (a.k.a. ghee) contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods cites a study that links consumption of CLA from dairy fat to a 75% lower risk for breast cancer for the study participants.
 
Additionally, ghee contains butyric acid, which according to Healing With Whole Foods, has anti-viral and anti-cancer properties that may offer protection against colon cancer and other diseases of the digestive tract.
 

Boost Your Meditation, Yoga Practice, and Sex Life

Ayurvedic Doctor Robert Svoboda says that ghee is a food that, like honey and pure water, increases mental equilibrium when eaten in appropriate quantities. Therefore, in yogic and Ayurvedic traditions, consumption of ghee may make your mind more balanced and better suited for deep meditation.
 
Ayurvedic tradition also indicates that ghee is good for those who have depleted their ojas. Ojas is a substance that is the foundation of your immunity, and is connected to the aura, digestion, and sexuality.
 
Restoring our ojas by regularly consuming ghee can increase agni, inner digestive fire, and through proper digestion we can restore and enhance our dhatus, or bodily substances. One of the dhatus is shukra, which is our creative or reproductive substances.
 
So whether you are trying to get your meditation on or get your freak on yogi style, start out with a healthy dose of ghee.
 
Want to learn more about the Ayurvedic tradition and how it relates to your diet? Check out How to Eat for Your Dosha + What Foods to Avoid
 

Mental and Spiritual Balance

Within the tradition of Ayurveda, ghee is listed among rice, milk, mung beans, honey, and pure water as foods that increase mental equilibrium when eaten in appropriate quantities.
 
Sattva in Sanskrit means “purity.” Ghee is said to be highly sattvic. Sattva is one of the three gunas – or fundamental forces of nature – which is the feeling of balance and lightness that we get through a steady yoga practice.
 
Since ghee is believed to increase mental equilibrium, consumption of ghee can help your mind become better suited for deep meditation.
 

Let’s Get Cooking with Ghee!

At its most basic, ghee is a shelf-stable cooking oil that has a high smoke point which makes ghee a good choice for sautéing spices and vegetables in to make delicious dishes like Kitchari.
 

How to Make Your Own Ghee at Home

Making ghee is an easy and simple process that you can have fun with. Now that you’ve gained a basic understanding of what ghee is, it’s health benefits, and it’s other amazing properties, let’s dive into making ghee ourselves.
 

Step 1: Select Your Butter

It’s important to look for unsalted organic butter from pasture raised cows. I recommend using Cultured Butter from Organic Valley.
 

 
 

Step 2: Gather Your Cooking Utensils

All you need is a clean small or medium-size pot, a fine mesh strainer, and your high-quality butter.
 

 
 

Step 3: Cook Your Butter

Place your butter on the stove on super low heat. Allow your butter to melt. Option to start repeating your chosen mantras if you’d like (see the introduction for a refresher on how you can energetically charge your ghee using a mantra).
 
 

Step 4: Wait Patiently

It can be tempting to turn up the temperature and speed up the process, but don’t! Ghee is best made slowly using low heat.
 
Just stay nearby, repeat your mantra, and stay focused on the relationship you are creating with the world around you through food. Enjoy the process – it won’t take long!
 

 
Soon you will see the butter melting and the white stuff around the edges is the milk solids floating to the top.
 

 
 

Step 4, Part 2: Look for Milk Solids

Once the butter is fully melted, the milk solids will rise to the top. This is good and means progress. Now keep calm, and chant on.
 

 
Eventually, the butter will start to boil and pop, this is where the water that was in the butter is boiling off. Stand back as it might get a little messy, but that’s part of the fun.
 

 
 

Step 5: Ladle, Then Cool

After a short while, the butter will stop boiling and popping. This is when you’ll use a clean ladle and brush the milk solids to one side of the pot.
 
You should be able to see the bottom clearly through the liquid butter, but if not – cook a little longer. Ultimately, it should have a distinctive gold coloring. At this point, remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Allowing to cool is a key step to let the milk solids thicken so you can easily strain them out.
 
 

Step 6: Strain It

Using a clean and airtight glass jar for storage, pour your newly created liquid love through a strainer into the jar. If your jar has a small opening, you can use a strainer to pour your ghee into it mess-free. If done properly, all the milk solids will remain in the strainer.
 

 
At this point, all you need to do is let the ghee chill. Leave the lid off until your ghee has cooled.
 
 

Step 7: Chill and Then Store

 
Important note: If you want your ghee to stay fresh, NEVER use the same implement twice in the jar. Always use a new, clean spoon.
 

Add Ghee to Your Healthy Lifestyle

Ghee is incredibly nourishing and beneficial for your health. It’s an excellent addition to many recipes and a great cooking ingredient. Some even like to put some in their Bulletproof coffee as a substitute for coconut oil.
 
Whether you’re concerned with a healthy, well-rounded diet, or interested in living a holistic, Ayurvedic lifestyle, ghee is awesome! Have fun ghee-eeking out making your very own ghee recipe, and enjoy all the yummy ways you can imbibe this wonder food.
 

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