Collection: Grass-Fed Ghee

What ghee is, and why the culturing matters

Ghee is butter with the water and the milk solids taken out. You melt it slowly, the water steams off, the solids sink and brown, and what you pour away from them is pure butterfat. That single step changes three things at once: it keeps without refrigeration, it stops burning at the temperature ordinary butter burns at, and the parts of dairy most people react to — lactose and casein — are largely gone with the solids.

Cultured is the distinction worth paying for. Every jar here is made from cultured butter: the cream is fermented before it is churned, the way traditional Indian ghee has always been made. Clarified butter made in a hurry from sweet cream is smooth and a little flat. Culturing builds a tangy, nutty depth first, and the clarifying concentrates it. If a label says only "clarified butter," it is a different product at a similar price. The long version, with the label law and a method for making your own, is in ghee versus butter, explained.

The six jars, and what each one is for

• Traditional Ghee — cultured grass-fed butter and nothing else. 2 oz $7.99, 10 oz $28.95, 33 oz $62.95; the 19 oz is sold out at the moment. The default cooking fat, and the jar to learn on.
• Brown Butter Ghee — the same cultured butter cooked further over an open flame until nut and caramel notes develop, then clarified. All four sizes in stock, $9.95 to $64.95. For roasting, and for any recipe that asks you to brown butter first.
• Vanilla Dream Ghee — infused with organic vanilla bean, not sweetened. 2, 10 and 19 oz, $9.95 to $42.95. Coffee, tea and cookie dough; the maker pairs it with the Brown Butter for baking.
• Chai Spice Ghee — a masala chai blend of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, black pepper and nutmeg; spiced, not sweet. Only the 10 oz at $30.95 is in stock right now (the 2 oz and 19 oz are sold out). Oatmeal, butter-coffee, French toast, roasted squash.
• Lemon & Garlic Ghee — made with whole organic garlic and whole organic lemon, cooked in rather than stirred through. 2, 10 and 19 oz, $9.95 to $42.95. Greens, potatoes, and a spoonful over fish or steak off the heat.
• Fancy Niter Kibbeh Ghee — Ethiopian spiced butter with garlic, ginger, onion, koseret, black cardamom, black seed and a toasted spice blend, the spices grown in Ethiopia. Sold in 10 and 19 oz only; the 10 oz is sold out, the 19 oz is $47.95. Stirred into a stew at the end, eggs, popcorn, or mixed with berbere as a condiment.

The number that decides the pan: smoke point

Butter gives up early because its milk solids scorch; the figures usually quoted for it run from about 300 to 350 °F. Ghee has no solids left to scorch, and the figures quoted for it run from about 450 to 485 °F. Sources disagree on the exact numbers, not on the gap. That gap is the practical reason to own a jar — it is a searing and roasting fat that still tastes of butter, where butter alone would blacken. It is also why the Traditional or the Brown Butter is the one to reach for when heat is the point, and why the infused jars are better added at lower temperatures or in the last minute, where their aromatics survive.

What it really costs: read the price by the ounce

Shelf prices here run from $7.99 to $64.95, and most of that spread is jar size, not butter. The 2 oz jars are tasters: about $4.00 an ounce for the Traditional and $4.98 for the infused ones. At 10 oz it falls to $2.90 an ounce for the Traditional and $3.10 for the others; at 19 oz the infused jars are about $2.26 an ounce; and the 33 oz Traditional at $62.95 is the least expensive butterfat in the collection, at about $1.91 an ounce.

The Niter Kibbeh is not the outlier it looks like. It has no 2 oz taster, so its lowest shelf price is higher, but its 19 oz jar at $47.95 comes to about $2.52 an ounce — roughly 26 cents an ounce more than the other infused jars at the same size, for a spice blend grown in Ethiopia. It is a finishing ingredient bought by the spoonful, and priced close to the rest once you compare like with like.

There is a second, quieter trade-off. The plainest jar is the only one that does everything. The Traditional sears, roasts, bakes, goes into coffee and disappears into a dal. Every infusion narrows the jar to what its flavor suits. If you are buying one, buy the Traditional — the 2 oz to find out whether you like ghee at all, the 10 oz for a fair trial, the 33 oz once it has replaced butter and oil in your kitchen. If you are buying two, add whichever infusion matches what you actually cook on a Tuesday.

What to look for, and how to store it

Grass-fed and cultured stated plainly, small-batch or open-flame cooking rather than industrial clarification, and glass rather than plastic. Color should be deep gold; pale usually means sweet-cream butter and a fast process. At room temperature it is soft and spoonable, and in a cold kitchen it sets grainy and firm — normal, not a fault. One technical note the chai jar makes well: most of what makes warm spices taste warm is fat-soluble, which is why chai is brewed with milk rather than water. Spices cooked into butterfat are already in the medium that carries them.

Store it in the cupboard, not the fridge. With the water gone there is little left to spoil quickly, and cold makes it hard to spoon. Keep the jar out of direct sun, use a dry spoon every time — a wet or crumb-laden one is the one thing that will shorten its life — and close the lid. This is food, and dairy: it is not suitable for a dairy-free diet, and anyone with a milk allergy rather than lactose intolerance should treat it as dairy. Nothing here is a health claim or a substitute for medical advice.

Ghee on the altar as well as in the pan

For most of its history ghee was a devotional substance before it was a cooking one. It is the fuel of the diya lamp and the offering poured into the fire in homa and havan rites, including the small daily fire ceremony known as Agnihotra — Agnihotra, the Vedic fire ritual sets out what the classical practice asks for, and real ghee is on that list. For a lamp or a fire offering, use the Traditional: the infused jars are cooking ingredients, and garlic or vanilla has no place in an offering flame. For the everyday overlap between the two, kitchen witchery, with three recipes is the gentler way in. Those uses are traditional and devotional; we describe them, we do not promise anything from them.

Where this sits

Ghee is one shelf of the Ritual Kitchen, next to ceremonial cacao, mushroom extract powders, matcha and latte blends and loose-leaf tea, with mugs, cups and drinkware for the cup itself. Two pairings that earn their place: a small spoon of Chai Spice or Vanilla Dream stirred into an Original Chai Latte ($44.95), and a little of the Traditional whisked into an Original Turmeric Latte ($44.95), which is how golden milk is often made at home in India — the fat carries the turmeric.

Frequently asked questions