

Ree Drummond loves to cook with butter-it adds so much flavor and richness to recipes both sweet and savory! In fact, she says, "I buy 10 to 15 pounds of butter at a time!" You might already have a brand of butter you love, but you might also be wondering about the best ones available at the supermarket. Ginger ghee: 2 tablespoon fresh minced ginger.Butter is an essential part of any pantry.Rosemary-thyme ghee: 6 sprigs each of rosemary and thyme.Mint-Jalapeño ghee: ½ cup mint leaves and 1 large, chopped jalapeño.Cardamom ghee: 6-7 crushed cardamom pods.

Garlic ghee: 6-7 crushed or minced garlic cloves.Here are some popular examples (the quantities are for a pound of butter):

Add your favorite combination of herbs and spices right about when the butter is melted and leave them until the very end of the process. When making flavored ghee, it's better to clarify the butter with the boiling method so the herbs or spices have a chance to infuse all their taste. In the process of clarifying butter, you can add all sorts of herbs and spices to infuse their aroma and color and give the resulting ghee a delicious taste that will give the food you prepare an even more delicious taste. Line a fine mesh strainer with a cheese cloth or paper towel over your final glass jar and pour the clarified butter. When the water has all evaporated, the butter will stop boiling and this is when that clarified butter is ready. The butter will come to a boil and you can now let it boil for about 15 minutes while stirring from time to time. Remove the froth on top during the process with a spoon or slotted spoon. Melt the butter over a medium-high heat while stirring occasionally to make sure the milk solids don't burn. There are basically two methods used to make clarified butter, the slow melting method and the shorter boiling method. Kerry Gold sells a very high quality pastured, grass-fed and organic butter all over the US. When the cows eat a rapidly growing green grass, the butter will often have orange undertones, reflecting the high amount of carotenes in it. The quality, color and nutrition value of the butter will be much greater in such butter. It's very important that you choose a high-quality, unsalted butter coming from pasture-raised and grass-fed cows. You can of course buy butter already clarified at your local Indian food store or online from sites like Pure Indian Foods, but it's also very easy to make at home. I honestly haven't found a single preparation where clarified butter is not well-suited. It has a delicious nutty taste that will please any butter lover out there and goes well with virtually anything.

It's ideal for sauteing, roasting, stir-frying or any other cooking method that requires high-heat. The other advantage of clarified butter is that you can heat it at a much higher temperature because it's a highly saturated fat and you don't run the chance of burning any of the milk solids. I personally prefer consuming clarified butter because I've been dealing with leaky gut and autoimmune problems for a number of years and I now always stay on the safe side, even though butter is already pretty safe by itself. It's perfect for people who want to stay 100% Paleo or who might worry that some constituents like lactose or casein in the butter might cause health problems. Clarified butter, also called Ghee in Indian cuisine, is simply butter with the milk proteins, sugars and water removed.
