Ghee is one of the best cooking fats there are and an exceptional butter. What makes it so?
Number one:
Having a smoke point higher than its regular counterpart, it is a great butter to cook with at higher temperatures, deep-fried foods including.
Number two:
Providing a rich and nutty aroma, ghee is a great ingredient to make homemade sweets and desserts. It’s quite flavorful, so much so that when making ghee, many people prefer to keep the caramelized brown solids than to throw them away. They’re indeed delicious.
And ghee itself is addictive. People confess to eating it with a spoon straight out of the jar. And, of course, there are those who fondly remember their grandmother making ghee and how much they enjoyed it as kids.
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Ghee can be found at various stores and supermarkets, although a majority of people prefer to make their own ghee at home from good quality regular and unsalted butter. While a commercial product today, this beloved fat has a very special place in Indian cuisine.
Ghee – a true food of the gods
Hindus believe ghee is a true food of the gods. Not long after it was discovered some 4,000 years ago, ghee became part of religious rituals and was revered as a sacred fat.
Ghee was actually discovered because of necessity. The hot climate made it difficult for people to store and use butter. Therefore a solution was needed to stabilize it so that it could be used in extreme heat. People discovered clarifying the butter allows for better storage and proper use.
Butter is said to have been clarified for the first time around 1800-2000 before Common Era somewhere in the northeast corner of the Indian subcontinent, although ghee only became popular upon reaching Southern India.
People in Southern India revered this fat so much that they included it in important writings of the era and granted it mystical abilities. According to Hindu mythology, Prajapati, the primordial creative force poured ghee into fire to create his descendants.
And even today ghee is used in Indian religious rituals performed by people everywhere.
Agnihotra, which is an ancient fire ritual that was revived in the twentieth century by Parama Sadguru who also promoted this purification ritual in the Western world, is performed by providing an offering and reciting a special mantra.
The offering is usually raw whole rice drizzled with a few drops of ghee, as ghee has long been considered superior food. In ancient times, foods made by people of a lower caste were only eaten by the upper class if they contained ghee because ghee was considered to raise the standard of inferior foods to superior.
Ghee – also a medicinal butter
Used a lot in cooking and mainly known as a kitchen ingredient, ghee has been used since first discovered as a treatment for skin conditions. Ghee eases digestion because it contains butyrate, an anti-inflammatory fat that also reduces the risk of gut-related diseases and colon cancer.
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Ghee is also used to accelerate the healing process of burns and as a moisturizer. It makes a great conditioning mask for dry hair and is a great ingredient in moisturizing creams.