To Ghee Or Not To Ghee

(KM) #1

I’m considering making ghee my go-to cooking fat, primarily because it’s easy to find the pasture raised and finished etc. etc. I’m looking for at a price that’s not insane, and so simple to keep on the counter. It also has a much higher smoke point than butter, tallow or lard, which is great in terms of frying / sauteeing. I guess my question is whether that’s actually a good thing. Higher smoke point = more glycation = bad???

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

Higher smoke point means less damage to the fats from heating. Not sure where glycation comes into it, since ghee shouldn’t contain any glucose at all.

Many people prize ghee for the flavour, but you can make your own clarified butter very easily. It might not taste quite the same, but it should still have the higher smoke point. You could even, if you wanted, make your own butter from heavy whipping cream, to be sure that it’s glucose-free.

Speaking of making your own butter, my aunt used to churn butter by hand, till my uncle made a churn for her by fitting a mixer motor into the cap of a giant mayonnaise jar. What used to take her an hour or two thereafter took only about ten minutes.

(KM) #3

Thank you. I think the “glycation” is a concern with the meat I’m cooking, not the ghee itself. I keep reading that all this charring of the protein is not good for us.

I have actually hand churned my own butter (ok, only once, but I’ve made it with my stand mixer by accident quite a few times :roll_eyes::grin:). in truth, given how much butter I’d get out of that insanely expensive cream I’m buying, it would be more expensive than just buying the butter directly. (which, for the butter I’m looking at which utilizes rotational pasture etc., is $36 per pound. Plus delivery. Ergh. )

(Pete A) #4

I f n love ghee.

(KM) #5

Well that would be another reason to try it, then! Thanks.

(Marianne) #6

That’s all I use now. I purchase it from an Asian/Middle Eastern specialty store. I get it in the large jar and it lasts me I’d say four months. It is $16/jar and a bargain at that. It is exorbitant at the regular grocery store, for a 12 oz. jar.

#7

I file that one away with cow farts destroying the planet. That, and I don’t overcook my meat either way, as that should be a felony. I don’t call a nice sear “charring” meat. Just more crap to make us think eating meat will kill us with cancer.