How to Make Ghee at Home

4.8 stars, average of 103 ratings

By Martina Slajerova, updated August 15 202030

I love ghee! Ghee is clarified butter that has no casein or lactose. It still tastes quite close to butter and is great for cooking. Why make ghee? You don't need to be an orthodox paleo eater or suffer from food allergies to make your own ghee at home.

Compared to butter, ghee doesn't burn at high temperatures. You can also store it at room temperature and infuse it with ingredients like garlic, onion or any herbs. The options are endless!

And best of all, there are no carbs in infused ghee but you still get all the flavour in just a tablespoon of pure fat!

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Apart from the inhgredients, you'll need:

small pouring pan
small Pyrex glass jar
cheesecloth for filtering the liquid
sieve with smallest holes possible
small glass container (~ 200 ml/ 7 fl oz)

Be creative, try infusing ghee with vanilla beans, cinnamon or natural almond extract and use for making low-carb pancakes!

0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes

Hands-on 15 minutes Overall 15 minutes

Serving size 1 tbsp/ 15 ml

Allergy information for How to Make Ghee at Home

✔ Gluten free

✔ Dairy free

✔ Egg free

✔ Nut free

✔ Nightshade free

✔ Pork free

✔ Avocado free

✔ Coconut free

✔ Fish free

✔ Shellfish free

Pescatarian

Low FODMAP

Download Recipe

Nutritional values (per serving, 1 tbsp/ 15 ml)

Net carbs0 grams

Protein0 grams

Fat14 grams

Calories127 kcal

Calories from carbs 0%, protein 0%, fat 100%

Total carbs0 gramsFiber0 gramsSugars0 gramsSaturated fat8.4 gramsSodium2 mg(0% RDA)Magnesium0 mg(0% RDA)Potassium3 mg(0% EMR)

Ingredients (makes about 200 ml/ 6.8 fl oz)

1 package unsalted butter (250 g/ 8.8 oz)
Optional: 1 head garlic, 1 onion or any fresh herbs of choice (rosemary, basil, sage, thyme, mint, etc.)

Instructions

To make garlic-infused ghee, slice the garlic.
Place the butter into a pan and start warming up on low heat. Slowly let it melt. Even if you use salted butter, all the salt will separate from the fat and your ghee will not be affected.
Add the sliced garlic and let it simmer. As the butter melts, pure fat will separate from the milk solids and water. Keep shimmering on low heat. The water will start to evaporate as soon as you see bubbles on the surface, followed by white foam.
About 10 minutes after the butter melts, the milk solids (mostly lactose) will eventually stick to the sides and bottom of the pan and will turn light golden. Be careful not to burn the ghee! Once the milk solids turn golden, it only takes a minute.
Take off the heat. Put a sieve on the top of the heat-resistant jug. Place the cheesecloth in a double layer onto the sieve and pour the ghee carefully through the cheesecloth.
Discard the milk solids trapped in the cheesecloth and anything left in the pan.
You should end up with about 80% of the volume of the butter.
Pour the ghee in a glass jar.
After it cools down, you can either keep it refrigerated or at a room temperature. After a few hours, the ghee will naturally solidify. Ghee can be stored at room temperature for several months. Store-bought ghee does not need to be refrigerated. Homemade ghee can also be stored at room temperature as long as there are no milk solids left.

Ingredient nutritional breakdown (per serving, 1 tbsp/ 15 ml)

Net carbs	Protein	Fat	Calories
Butter, unsalted - used to make ghee
0 g	0 g	14 g	127 kcal
Total per serving, 1 tbsp/ 15 ml
0 g	0 g	14 g	127 kcal

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Chris 2 years ago #

I've been staying away from infused oils/fat for a while now because I was unsure of how they fit into my carb count. Really nice to finally have an answer! Can't wait to start infusing. 😊

Rahul Khurana 2 years ago #

Any suggestions how to infuse ghee with 100% pure hing resin (not powder)?
Thanks.

Urishima 2 years ago #

So, it's basically butter oil/re-solidified butter with some sort of flavoring to it? Can get that for cheap here in German supermarkets.

Kelly 2 years ago #

And your point is?? We all know that but that's not what this is about 😊 Besides grass-fed ghee is not as cheap as you think. It's cheaper to make it at home.

TM 2 years ago #

I use Kerrygold pure Irish butter. Guess I will try and make ghee to remove the milk/cream. Hope it works!

Leo 3 years ago #

I tried making one. Still had some solids. Read the article below and some helpful hints. Awesome. I also like the top pictures. Helps a lot. My first batch was not useless. I use it. Will try infused garlic...

Janne 4 years ago #

I tried making ghee, but for some reason I couldn't get rid of all the solids and there was left a few millimeters thick layer of white stuff on the bottom of the jar. Can you always get rid of of all the solids easily? Perhanps this happened because I didn't have actual cheesecloth and used some sort of polyesther cloth instead. Maybe that material is the reason why some of the solids ran through it even after several attemps of trying to clarify the butter.

Martina @ KetoDiet 4 years ago #

Yes, you do need cheesecloth - maybe it wasn't dense enough and that's why it didn't catch all the solids. If I don't have any cheesecloth, I use a layer of paper towel and it works just fine - nothing goes through.

MJ jewett 3 years ago #

Hey there. I use kerrygold pure irish butter and there are no milk fats to skim off. U can eat it like cheese. Try it.

gvb one year ago #

Hi,
The layer of solids at the bottom is perfectly fine. Source: My Indian mother used to make ghee like that all the time at home growing up. Ghee looks like that, clear stuff at the top and solid white granular stuff at the bottom.

Martina @ KetoDiet one year ago #

The problem is that the solids could get rancid if you leave it at room temperature.

Juliet 4 years ago #

Hi, Where would I find nice jars to store? Thank you

Hi Juliet, I'd think Amazon? I can't remember where I got these from 😊

priyanka 5 years ago #

was looking for this kind of easy recipe for Ghee prep...Thanks a lot for sharing... M definetly going to try this today

Martina @ KetoDiet 5 years ago #

Always! 😊

Marsha 5 years ago #

i have been saving and using rendered chicken fat to grease my griddle and pan when searing.. I've seen the TV cooks use goose fat in dishes. Is it too weird to ask if Ghee from chicken/turkey fat will be fine and has anyone else done such?

Hi Marsha, all can be used for cooking. Ghee is only made from butter - it's dairy fat. Goose fat or duck fat are great for greasing / cooking too just like ghee but they are made from the tissue / fat layer.

Brittney 5 years ago #

Can I use ghee in place of butter as far as conversion rates go? Say if I wanted to use ghee in baking versus using butter? Tablespoon to tablespoon?
And how about the nutritional information? Is it the same as butter?

Butter has about 80% fat and ghee is 100% fat. This means that you may need to use more butter for the same results and avoid using butter for high-heat cooking. There is about 15 grams of fat in a tablespoon of ghee and 12 grams of fat in a tablespoon of butter. This makes ghee slightly higher in calories (there is some water and lactose) Hope this helps 😊

Adel 5 years ago #

Hi, you say there is some water and lactose : in butter or in ghee ? Thank you.

Hi Adel, there is some water, lactose, casein, etc. in butter. Ghee is pure fat unless it's not strained well.

Darlene 6 years ago #

How long can you store it?

Martina @ KetoDiet 6 years ago #

Hi Darlene, you can store it up to 12 months but I usually finish is in a few weeks or a month 😊

Allison 7 years ago #

This sounds delicious, but isn't there a concern for botulism in garlic-infused oils? Or is that only for olive oil?

KetoDiet 7 years ago #

Thank you for your comment! I don't think there is. I'm not storing garlic or herbs in the oil but discard it straight away after infusing it. I think this only applies to garlic or herbs stored in oil to infuse it slowly. However, this is only my opinion and I would suggest you ask a specialist.

Andrew one year ago #

I'm not a food scientist but believe it is still a risk. It's likely that botulinum spores in the garlic will be transferred to the fat during the process.
See https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/4385e/

Ash Simmonds 7 years ago #

Ah cool - I use ghee almost exclusively in cooking, never bothered to try making it though, just assumed I'd lose most of my butter, but you reckon it yields ~75%?
Will try this garlic infused version when current ghee tub runs out (I go through a tub a week).

For cooking I use ghee, bacon grease, lard and coconut oil, but ghee is the #1 for me 😊
I used a 250 g package and it made the two small jars (on the photo), each of them is 100 ml, so it made about 75-80% ghee. It depends on the quality of the butter, water content, etc. Good butter should have 80-90% fat.

Julian 7 years ago #

This is a great read. I'll be trying this concoction this weekend. Thanks for this!

Thank you! I was even thinking of trying dried mushrooms to "infuse" ghee... 😊