What Is Ghee and How Do You Use It?

One question that I get all the time is “what is ghee and how do you use it?” People also ask me “what’s the difference between ghee and butter?”  Well, what I’m holding in my hands in the video above are two grass-fed products which is very, very important.  This is how you’re going to have access to all the fine stuff that’s available.  Butyrate is what’s in butter and butyrate is known to help brain function.  How do you like that?  It’s a good fat.  It’s not a bad fat like margarine.  Let me just say that right from the top.  Don’t ever eat margarine.

The other thing I say is make sure on your grass-fed butter, like Kerrygold which is a fabulous brand, that you go with the unsalted kind.  I’m holding the salted right now and it’s okay, it’s fantastic but mostly, 90% of the time, I use unsalted butter. The reason being is that I like to control how much salt I’m adding and what kind of salt I’m adding.  So, go with an unsalted brand of grass-fed butter. Kerrygold is one of the best and you can find it everywhere.  This one came from Costco.

The other thing I’m holding is ghee.  What is ghee?  Ghee is basically clarified butter.  Ghee is the Indian term for clarified butter and what has happened in ghee is that it has been melted on a low heat very slowly and the dairy. The milk solids have been taken off, most notably is the casein and most people who have real serious dairy allergies are allergic to the casein.  So, when you have this, you’ve just basically got butter oil, and believe it or not, the smoke point for ghee is higher than the smoke point for coconut oil.  400 degrees is the smoke point for ghee so you can do some high-heat cooking from that as opposed to butter which is about 275.

So, if you’re going to be doing some sautéing, my suggestion is that you get ghee and use that in lieu of using butter.  It has that buttery taste but none of the burn factor. And just remember, any time that you see your butter smoking or any other oil smoking on the stove, you’ve just taken a good fat and turned it into a trans fat and you need to dump it and start over.

Anyway, there are all of your answers to the difference between ghee and butter.

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