Making your own with your favorite store-bought butter, or biting the bullet & forking over $$$ for store-bought ghee?
If you make your own, do you have a preference for a particular butter?
Making your own is always better and cheaper!
Since you lose about a quarter of the Volume, I balance Quality and Price.
Last time Costco had Organic Butter on Sale I bought a few Pounds for making Ghee in addition to the Butter I regularly use.
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If you factor in time and cost of energy (either electricity or gas, or both), it’s definitely more economical to buy, as opposed to make.
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Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I also don’t use it a lot, so it would last quite a bit @casa lingua.
If you are storing it for a long Time refrigerate it.
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Alas, no Costco in these parts, and as I mentioned I don’t use it all that often. Maybe over the holidays when I’m bored & have some time on my hands 
It is super easy to do. Like making Beurre Noisette just a little less.
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Unsalted, right?
You get a better Yield from Unsalted
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I make my own, using a good quality, unsalted butter that I pick up in bulk when on sale. It’s really no big deal, the butter just cooks on the back burner while I do other things. I like to let mine caramelize a bit because I like the rich flavour. Cost wise, it’s about half the price when done this way.
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I have not compared the financial cost, but I use it a few times a week and I buy. Usually this one.
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I just picked up this jar at the Turkish store near us. It’ll come in handy tonight
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To make ghee (not just clarified butter) would cost much more than buying it where I live.
I have a strong preference for making my own. Land O’ Lakes is just fine, but if Plugra or President was on sale at BOGO, I’ll sometimes use one of those. Even when the price of butter hit its apex last year, it was still significantly cheaper to make it than to buy the premade ghee. That (price apex) was also when I was making my own cultured butter and I made ghee with that a few times.
I really do think it tastes better made at home, but caveat, I’ve only ever bought 2 pre-made, so maybe it was just luck of the draw that those brands were not very good.
But I also love the nutty flavored toasted protein/milk solids bits. For a pound of butter, I’ll leave 1-2 Tbs ghee still in the pan and refrigerate it mixed in with the toasted bits. Try some of this in the pan with other butter or oil when making any kind of eggs. I’ll also scoop out a spoonful and toss it in a pan sautéing some veggies, and stuff like gyro meat. Any fairly low-temp cooking where you want an umami punch. Just back off on the usual salt dosing if you used salted butter, because very little salt (if any) stays with the fat and ends up concentrated in the toasty milk solids.
ETA
Likely depends on where you live. I just did a quick check online at Kroger here and the ghee per 13 oz is double the cost of butter per pound, and as high as $16.50/13 oz for the one @shrinkrap posted.
I don’t think it takes me more than a therm or maybe 2 of gas, and I don’t value my time that highly (being retired I no longer charge per hr ). Plus the actual active time involved is just a few minutes.
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Don’t forget the cost of the container used to store homemade ghee.
Yes, you can eventually reuse it, but it’s still a cost.
And store bought ghee provides a “free” container of sorts, most of the time they are glass and quite nice to resuse. Especially to store homemade ghee.
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What ghee I use, I make myself. I’ve not thought much about end price comparison, but I have a general sense from behind the shopping cart that pre-prepared, jarred ghee is quite expensive, gram for gram.
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Hahaha. Until I got to your last paragraph, I was thinking “Now you’re REALLY reaching, Dude!”.
But yeah I do re-use one of the couple of store-bought containers for whatever (jams, sauces, sometimes ghee). Not sure what happened to the other one. A daughter probably stole it.
Mostly though I use a wider glass tub because I keep it in the fridge, and am more breaking off chunks with a paring knife than I am scooping out with a spoon like I could if I kept it RT.
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Really? Where/Why?
Cultured butter is expensive where I live. The Asian grocery stores in my area carry ghee that’s made from cultured butter.
Also, I believe that many people on this thread hold the misconception that ghee is simply clarified butter. Ghee is browned butter that is clarified. Browning butter evaporates the water which loses volume.
The jar of ghee in my refrigerator cost $11.99 for 21 ounces/600 grams. Enough cultured butter to yield that volume of ghee would cost much more.
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That’s a good point. I would add that for me it is as much acceptance as misconception. While I agree it sounds like it would take very little to have the true, real thing, I find for me, all the very little things add up, and sometimes, typically for a piece of protein, occasionally a vegetable, I accept good enough. 
I will certainly give the difference some thought going forward. I know when I am baking, (which is rare for me,) I would definitely take the extra step for browned butter.
I also moved my store bought ghee to the refrigerator.
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