What Ghee Is, and Why One Jar Costs Twice Another
By Prateek Singh · Pratapgarh Vedic Gau Gram
Ghee is butter, boiled down and strained.
You start with butter. You simmer it until the water has gone and the milk solids have browned, then you strain the solids out and keep what is left. That is ghee. Thirty litres of milk go into a kilo of our cow ghee, which is a large part of the reason one jar costs twice what another does.
Why is ghee called ghee, and what does English call it?
Ghee is how English spells घी, which comes from the Sanskrit ghṛta. The root is ghṛ-, to sprinkle. The word remembers ghee being poured: over rice, into a flame, onto a guest’s plate. It does not remember a frying pan.
If you are here for the English name, this is it. English took the word whole, so ghee stays ghee. Clarified butter is the closest description we have, and it is accurate as far as it goes. It just does not go very far, which is the subject of the next section.
The one difference that matters: curd, not cream
There are two ways to make ghee. One begins with cream separated out of milk. The other begins with the whole milk, boiled and set into curd, and churned.
We take the second. It is not sentiment and it is not heritage. It changes the butter.
Churn cream and the butter comes up fast and clean. Churn set curd and it comes up slower, in a different grain, and it carries the tartness of the dahi it came out of. That butter, called makkhan, is what goes into the pan. Everything you can taste in the finished ghee was decided by then.
What you notice first, when you taste the two side by side, is that the curd one has a longer finish. The cream one is clean and it stops. The curd one goes on for a moment after you have swallowed, and it is the same reason a good cheese tastes of more than milk.
So ghee is not simply butter that has been clarified. It is butter with a history, and the history starts at the curd. We make ours through five stages in a wooden churn at the farm. The stage by stage account is here, and it is worth reading before you buy a jar from anyone, ours included.
Why is one ghee white and another gold?
You open the jar and the ghee is white. Your first thought is that something has been added to it, or that something has been left out.
Nothing has. Cow’s milk carries carotene, and buffalo milk does not. Ghee keeps whatever colour the milk brought with it, so cow ghee comes out gold and buffalo ghee comes out white, and buffalo ghee stays white when it melts. Both are ghee. Both are made here.
Colour tells you which animal gave the milk. Judge ghee by its aroma and by how it melts on a hot roti.
Why does ghee set firm in winter and run in May?
Ghee is solid at room temperature. On a warm day it softens and looks almost liquid by evening. In winter it is firm enough to break cleanly under a spoon. Leave it on the counter through a Delhi summer and you will wonder whether the jar has gone wrong. It has not.
Set ghee takes a grain. A spoon comes up through it in small pieces rather than in a smooth paste, and that grain is called danedar. It is what ghee does as it cools, not something added to it and not something missing from it.
Both of these surprise people who have only ever bought ghee in a sealed tin. The rule is simple. Judge the jar by its aroma and by how it melts on a hot roti, not by whether it is standing up or running.
What is ghee for in the kitchen?
Everything butter does, ghee does with the water taken out. That single difference is why it behaves so differently in a hot pan.
Put ghee in a kadai for tadka and it takes the heat without turning brown and bitter the moment you look away. Fry puris in it and they come out light rather than greasy. Roast vegetables in it and they colour instead of steaming. Spread it on a hot roti and it sinks in and stays there.
In baking it is not a straight swap. Butter carries water, ghee does not, so a cake recipe written for butter needs adjusting or it will come out dry. Follow a recipe written for ghee, and it behaves.
It is also the reason ghee keeps. Water is what turns butter rancid in a week. Take it out, and the same fat sits in a jar for a year without asking anything of you.
How to keep it
Our ghee has a shelf life of one year. That is the period the fat holds when it is kept properly, and keeping it properly is not difficult.
Keep the lid on. Keep the spoon dry, because water is the only thing that will spoil it. Keep it out of direct sun. A cool cupboard is better than a windowsill, and a refrigerator is not necessary, though it will not hurt it.
If the jar goes liquid in May, nothing has happened. Put it somewhere cooler and it sets again overnight.
Ghee, butter and clarified butter
| Butter | Clarified butter | Ghee | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Made from | cream, churned | butter | butter, churned from curd |
| Water | still there | taken out | boiled out |
| Milk solids | still there | taken out | browned, then taken out |
| Aroma | cream | butter | nuts and caramel |
| In the jar | soft, spreads | sets thin and soft | sets firm, and grains |
Clarified butter is butter melted down and drawn off clean, with the water gone and the milk solids lifted out. Melt butter and you still have butter, because the water and the solids are all still in the pan. Clarify it and they are not. What is left is butterfat and very little else.
Ghee is the same idea carried further. The butter is simmered until the water has gone and the milk solids have coloured, and only then is it strained. In our own pan that last stretch is when the aroma stops being butter and starts being ghee. Same butter. Same pan. One more decision.
What does a kilo of ghee actually cost?
Here is the arithmetic, in the order it happens.
Thirty litres. A kilo of cow ghee absorbs about thirty litres of milk. Most of that is water and skim, and that cost does not go away. This is the single largest reason a jar of ghee costs what it does, and it is why a jar at a third of the price is not a bargain you have found. It is a different product.
One kitchen. Ours is at the farm. The milk comes in, the curd is set, the churn turns by hand, the pan simmers. We do not buy ghee in, and we do not blend what we make with anyone else’s.
Five stages, in order. Boiling, curdling, churning, separating the makkhan, simmering. Each one has a failure mode and each one has to be right, because the next stage cannot fix the last.
Delegates at the G20 came out to the farm. They were served this ghee. It is an odd sentence to write and a true one, and it says more about the kitchen than any adjective we could put on a label.
A farm you can walk around. Thirty-five acres, working since 2008, with the herd and the kitchen on it and guests coming through the year. It holds 4.8 from 30,516 Google reviews under the Pratapgarh Farms listing.
Three breeds, and no tanker. The A2 jar is the only one made from milk entirely from our own herd, Sahiwal, Hariana and Gir cows. Indigenous cows give a fraction of what a crossbred gives. The same land and the same day produce far less milk, which is the whole of the reason that jar costs ₹959 more than the cow jar.
All of it is ordinary on its own. Together, in one place, at the volume we make, it is why the jar carries the number it does. We would rather explain the number than discount the ghee.
What do the words on the jar mean?
Four words do most of the work on a ghee label.
Bilona is the wooden churn, and by extension the method. Ghee described as bilona means it was churned from curd rather than separated from cream. It is the most useful word on a jar.
Desi means of the land, native. On a ghee label it has come to mean the milk of indigenous cows, which is a description of the animal rather than a grade.
A2 is a variant of the beta-casein protein in milk, one amino acid in one protein, and it is a property of the breed that gave the milk. It describes the cow, not the jar. What the older literature makes of ghee is a separate matter and lives on its own page.
Danedar is the grain you see when the ghee sets. It is a description of texture.
The three jars
Murrah buffalo ghee. White, firm, bold, and the jar most of our regulars keep for everyday cooking.
Cow ghee. Gold, grainy, and the aroma people are describing when they say the ghee at home was better.
A2 cow ghee. The same ghee as the cow jar, made from the milk of our own Sahiwal, Hariana and Gir cows. Each of those cows carries a record of her dam and her date of birth, which is what makes A2 a fact about an animal rather than a word on a jar. Same five stages. Different milk, and a shorter supply chain.
If you are deciding between them, the three compared sets out what actually separates them. And if you want the older material, the classical texts are set out here, chapter and verse, without a claim added.
The range, and the price
One litre each. Murrah buffalo at ₹1,205. Cow at ₹1,640. A2 cow at ₹2,599.
If you want the most ghee for your money, the buffalo jar is the honest answer, and we will say so in print. If you want the milk of our own herd, that is what the A2 jar is for. Prices as at October 2026.
Questions people ask
What is ghee called in English?
Ghee. English took the word from Hindi घी, so it does not change. Clarified butter is the closest English description and it is accurate as far as it goes. It does not mention the curd, which is where the difference between the two actually lives.
Is ghee the same as clarified butter?
Ghee is one kind of clarified butter. The distinction sits in the last stage. Ghee is simmered until the milk solids take colour before they are strained out. In our ghee there is also the stage before it, the curd, which clarified butter never sees.
Is ghee just melted butter?
No. Melted butter is still butter, with its water and its milk solids in the pan. Ghee is what you get when the water has boiled away, the solids have coloured, and both have been taken off. The jar holds the butterfat and very little else.
Can I use ghee instead of butter?
In a pan, yes. Frying, roasting, tadka, finishing. In baking, butter carries water that ghee does not, so follow a recipe written for ghee rather than swapping one for one and hoping.
How much milk does it take to make ghee?
About thirty litres for a kilo of cow ghee. Most of that is water and skim, which is why a small jar carries so much milk inside it and why the price is what it is.
