How to Make Ghee in the Slow Cooker

The other day, I made Ghee - a clarified butter popular in India, in which the milk solids have been taken out. The remaining oil is shelf-stable and has a high smoke point, and  it tastes incredible on vegetables or for dipping bread into.

I'd love to feel all impressive about this bit of DIY, but this was seriously one of the easiest things I've ever done - and I'll be doing it regularly now.

Here's all there is to it:

Get some good butter from a grass-fed source (Kerrygold Irish Butter is good - I used butter from our local dairy).  Put it into your slow cooker and turn it on LOW without a lid (we want to melt this slowly, not sizzle it).

Now leave it alone - no stirring, no fiddling with it - for about 8 hours.  You'll see a white foam on the top, and this will either eventually fall to the bottom and brown, or it won't - it'll stay on the top and start to brown.  Since it could go either way, don't use that as your sole marker for whether or not it's done - instead, as you get down to the last hour, be on the alert to the ghee itself starting to darken - you want to try to stop it before then.

This is how mine looked after about 2 hours - and  then I got busy with other things (ehem *cross stitch* ehem) and forgot to take a picture of it in the pot at the end.  A lot more of the white milk solids came to the top, and some of it fell to the bottom and browned. Most stayed on top and got crispy, with browning around the edge of the pot.

So what you do at this point is use a slotted spoon or small strainer and scoop up those milk solids.  Set them into a bowl or something because, if you're able to eat dairy, you are going to make an  insanely delicious snack of them in a minute (they taste like hot, fresh, butter cookies!).  Cook's privilege, baby - no sharing!

Lastly, I strained the ghee through a filter into jars - my pound of butter game me a cup and a half of ghee.  It is supposed to last a good long time on the counter without becoming rancid (as long as all the milk solids are gone), but there's no way this will be around long enough to find out how long a good long time is.