So for the upcoming Soap Challenge Club April Challenge I needed to make Ghee. I had never even really heard of ghee other than seeing it in the oil section at the fancy grocery store, but I needed to add more lauric and myristic fatty acids to my soap, and Ghee was apparently a really good source. I have no clue how it will soap, but I decided to pass on my experience with making Ghee.
First off, I found this incredibly easy to do! If making tallow is intimidating to you, then making ghee would be a really good starting place for gaining confidence. It only takes about 45 minutes and when you're done you have this amazing caramelly, nutty, sweet smelling goo spread (seriously my son thought I was making cookies... whomp whomp)!
What I used:
First off, I found this incredibly easy to do! If making tallow is intimidating to you, then making ghee would be a really good starting place for gaining confidence. It only takes about 45 minutes and when you're done you have this amazing caramelly, nutty, sweet smelling goo spread (seriously my son thought I was making cookies... whomp whomp)!
What I used:
- Grass-fed beef butter
- Cutting board and knife
- Sturdy pot with a nice thick bottom (and, yes, I know that's what he said)
- Slotted metal spoon
- Fine mesh sieve
- Cheesecloth (or cotton t-shirts)
- Mason Jars
So here's what happened.
I took grass-fed beef butter and cut it up into little pieces, then melted it on medium/medium-low in a good pot.
Next:
The butter foamed up and began to form a thickish layer of froth. Although I don't show it in any of the pictures I did occasionally stir the surface of the butter goo and scrape the sides if anything started to cling. Eventually the foam was so thick that the bubbles almost couldn't get through.
And then:
Suddenly the bubbles began to break through again. They gradually got larger and larger until the entire surface was boiling. I knew from the sources I'd read that I was looking for a second foaming phase and I wondered if I would be able to recognize it when it happened.
When Suddenly:
Yes. It's pretty recognizable when it happens, so if you try to make ghee and are wondering the same question, then the answer is yes. It foams up quickly with an airy almost soapy lather that practically doubled the volume of my butter while it was going.
After that:
I removed the melted butter concoction from the hot eye and set it aside a moment. Almost immediately the foam fell and the brown crumblies sank to the bottom of the pot.
Next:
I set the cheesecloth in the sieve and poured the ghee through the cloth into a bowl where I let it cool down a little more.
When it was cooled enough to not fatally wound me:
I poured the strained ghee from a bowl to a mason jar. I was soooo gorgeous. I ended up straining it again because I could see little floaties in it and didn't like that, so that's why the volume is different from here to here:
It's also why I suggested using an old t-shirt to strain your stuff. The types of cheesecloths they sell in the store are a joke and they did a terrible job at filtering. But, I didn't want to use my husband's old t-shirt for soap I would be making to sell. So, yeah, life's about give and take right.
Anyway the photos that Healthy Foodie provided were really helpful in making sure I was at the right place of ghee-rendering, so hopefully this will help someone else.
Oh also, I used 2 lbs of butter and filled 2 1-pint mason jars to the top (the one that I strained twice originnally filled the jar to the top as well..
Tomorrow I'll soap it and see what happens. Be sure to keep an eye out for that adventure.
<3
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