Paleo Powered: Ginger Goes Primal: Liquid Gold! Ghee in all it's Glory

Butter, delicious butter. We love it because of it's creamy flavor and it makes so much of our cooking better. I've never heard anyone utter the phrase, this has too much butter. That's because butter makes everything better. BUT, butter is a no-no for some people - whether that be dietary, religious or choice.
Paleo has grey areas regarding butter. Some people use it as long as it's grassfed organic and others eschew it for avocado or coconut oils, but there's nothing quite like the taste of butter and we know it! Those that can't have butter because of religious or dietary reasons use the beautiful liquid gold that is known as Ghee aka clarified butter. Ghee? Gee whiz what's Ghee!

Well darlings, let me tell you. Ghee is butter with the milk fat boiled out of it. It's all the goodness of butter but without the milk. It's still great for toast and your favorite foods. And of course, it's perfect for cooking.
If you participate in the Whole30 this will help you immensely in your cooking and keeping butter in your life.

It's not hard to make and hopefully you'll find it as fun as I did and will add this to your list of kitchen must haves!

I borrowed this recipe from EverydayMaven and highly recommend her site as she has the best step by step pictures which really made this super easy to follow along and make.

I followed the Maven's step by step instructions and was able to complete this in about 45 minutes and even though the color looked different from hers, when I woke up this morning, the pretty butter color came through after cooling! I've included some of my pics and I'm really happy with how it turned out! Enjoy!

What you'll need:

Unsalted high quality butter - I bought the organic butter from TJs
A skillet or 5 quart pot - high sides are key here to avoid splashing/splatter so I used my 5 qt pot
2 long handled skimmers / sieve - one to skim the milk protein and one to strain off the ghee into the jar
A mason jar or glass container

*Definitely keep an eye on this and watch your temps closely, you don't want to scorch your butter!

Heat your skillet/5 quart pot over medium heat and add your butter when it's hot - be careful not to get your pan too hot as this will scorch your butter and change the flavor of your ghee in a way that is NOT recommended.

Stir the butter until its completely melted and starting to boil. Reduce the heat so that you keep it bubbling without causing it to splatter. For the next 25 minutes cook your butter until the milk protein completely separates and is a foamy layer on top - it'll have a sea foam look to it, this is where your hand skimmer will come into play! Skim off the foamy protein into a Pyrex dish, getting as much as possible out of your melted butter. Discard the skimmed protein once cooled.

After you've removed the milk protein, turn up the heat to medium low for another 5-10 minutes. Don't panic if your butter continues to boil, it will bubble some but eventually stop and the remaining milk protein will be on the bottom of the pan and appear brown, just don't burn them or you'll ruin the ghee flavor. Once the bubbling stops, the brown bits appear, turn off the stove and remove your ghee from the stove to cool.

When it's cool enough - about 10-20 minutes - strain your ghee through a fine sieve or skimmer into the jar you're going to store it in. Discard the bits in the sieve. You can store this at room temperature in your pantry or on your counter.

I found some pretty jars at Home Goods that worked beautifully.

I hope you enjoy making your ghee as much as I did!