Ghee is a very important product for many national cuisines:
Russian, Azerbaijani and even Indian.
To get good ghee,
you need good butter.
The sensory method of assessing oil will help
if you have significant life and culinary experience,
but the process of melting itself can be used to analyze the quality of the oil.
Watch carefully and don't switch.
If you had a Russian stove,
then I would recommend putting a pot of butter in a cooling oven overnight,
but you can take two pans so that one fits into the other.
Place the pieces of butter in a smaller saucepan.
It is not necessary to cut them too small, they will melt anyway.
If you heat the oil in an ordinary saucepan, in an ordinary cauldron,
which is placed on a gas burner,
then the bottom of the cauldron can heat up to such a temperature
at which the oil begins to burn.
And if you put a small saucepan in a water bath,
then the oil will not heat up above 100C,
and will melt without burning, and even without boiling.
The heat must be adjusted so
that the water in the lower pot does not boil too much.
If the oil starts to melt, then everything is fine.
Now it only remains to wait 7-8 hours.
Butter is mostly milk fat.
It is lightweight and floats to the top.
The rest in the oil is water and milk protein diluted in it.
The water sinks down the pan.
If heated over a fire, the water will boil.
The bubble of steam is enveloped in protein
and rises through the already melted milk fat.
Thus, milk fat and milk protein are constantly mixed,
and milk protein rises to the top in the form of foam.
But if you heat in a water bath, as I show,
or in a multicooker at a temperature of 85C or even 75C,
then the water at the bottom of the pan does not boil,
and all the milk protein remains at the bottom of the pan.
Look, the oil has already separated from the protein,
but the oil is still not transparent enough.
This means that there is both water and milk protein inside the butter.
Only after 7-8 hours the oil becomes absolutely transparent.
The lower the temperature, the better the oil exfoliates, albeit longer.
Animal fats and vegetable oils have different densities.
If you heat the oil for a very long time and at a low temperature,
then milk and vegetable fats will also separate, and it will be seen
how much an unscrupulous manufacturer has added vegetable oil.
Milk fat is good for your health and can last for months, even years.
When stored improperly in butter, it is the protein that spoils,
and in properly melted butter there is simply nothing to spoil.
As long as the oil in the pan is deep, there is nothing difficult.
Transfer it gently to a storage jar.
And when there is very little oil left, take the pan out into the cold.
Butter hardens faster than water and milk protein dissolved in it.
If you did everything correctly,
then ghee can be stored in a regular closet.
The bottom layer of ghee, frozen in the cold, is very easy to separate from the cream.
This is the usual thick crust of butter.
And the cream is still liquid under the butter.
They can be used, for example, for baking.
Wash the congealed ghee with water to remove any remaining cream.
Some cream and moisture will still remain in the oil, but not a problem.
Pieces of such oil must be melted again in the usual way.
The same quality of ghee will no longer work,
but this oil can also be used to prepare many dishes.
It will turn out exactly the same
as oil is obtained with the usual method of heating in a cauldron,
when you have to stand for several hours and remove the foam.
And still a fair amount of carbon remains at the bottom.
I wish you all the best in your culinary science.