[Sigh] The difference is–at most–how long the butter is cooked. Specifically whether or not the separating milk solids have undergone any Maillard reactions. This opens an entire case of canned worms.
Must flour used in roux be toasted to make it to roux? How dark must the roux or milk solids be to qualify for the monikers? Must the browning solids present an identifiable nutty flavor or smell? Does nuttiness from added nut oil disqualify the fat as ghee? As the linked article acknowledges, they’re both clarified butters.
I think any distinction between ghee and clarified butter is a matter of degree, not one of kind. It’s borderline theological.
I have serious doubts about those costs. While everybody’s value of time may differ, the truth is that time used for this job really has no actual (marginal) cost because so little is actually used and one can melt butter slowly while doing other things anyway. How much does it cost to read HO or watch TV? Nothing because nobody performs revenue producing activity all one’s waking hours, and like TV or HO or a thousand other things melting butter is one of those things that has no impact on the amount of time one can/does spend on income-producing activity. As far as energy is concerned, again the real cost of the amount used to melt butter is practically nil. Suppose your monthly electric bill is $100: will 10 minutes of melting butter on low heat increase that by a noticeable amount? Not really. Maybe 1/2¢?
I clarify my own butter, and am quite sure there is a big relative saving.
I am perfectly aware they are not the same thing (and as an aside I have known the difference for half a century). But they are very close, are sometimes used interchangeably in cooking, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. For purposes of the point I made, there is no material difference between them. Whether you make simple clarified butter or leave it on a little longer and get ghee, there is no meaningful difference in the cost. It’s definitely less expensive to make your own.
Maybe not cost, certainly time, and time for me is a cost.
There is most definitely not an insignificant difference in time if made properly.
When making clarified butter at home, the butter is cooked until the milk solids separate, then removed from heat and filtered into jars. That’s clarified butter. You are now done. Takes about 20 minutes.
To make ghee, you take this a step further by simply leaving the clarified butter to cook on the stove a little longer until you notice the milk solid sludge sticking to the bottom of the pot. Then you have to strain this before you have proper ghee. Now you are done. This is another 20 minutes.
I simply don’t see how there is no significant and material time difference between the two.
It’s sort of like saying there is no significant time difference between making steak and beef jerky.
Only if you stand there the whole time and watch it. Otherwise, as with most people, one does other things while that is happening and there is no marginal cost to one of the extra time spent.
If you are a lawyer billing out at $100 an hour, and making the ghee detracts from your billable time because you work at home all your waking hours, then maybe you have a point. Are you a lawyer working from home or something similar in its effect? If not, then the extra cooking time does not affect your income and thus there is no extra cost of the time.
If you wish to persist with this POV that you time at home has such a great monetary value, I suggest you stop cooking at all and order all your meals delivered, because your cooking time obviously costs much more than paying others to do it for you. Similarly, the time you spend reading and posting on HO is very costly to you and you may wish to rethink that as well.
The time spent making ghee at home is more expensive than store-bought ghee is a relevant 1:1 comparison because, well, ghee (for the most part) is ghee.
The time I spend cooking food at home are often comestibles I cannot find at restaurants, or at least not comparable items.
My homemade dumplings or beef noodle soup, for example, do not have store-bought or restaurant equivalents. So in that case, the cost is a relative inconsequential variable as the qualitative attributes of the foodstuff take precedence.
And none of that changes the question of your (true economic) cost of time at home engaged in what most consider a voluntary, mostly leisure, activity. Sorry, but your time is unlikely in the extreme to justify any claim that whatever extra time you would spend making ghee would make it so “costly” that it would be (is) less expensive to buy it. Your claim to the contrary is, frankly, risible. If you do it for fun or self-actualization, fine, break a leg. But actual cost, no.
When I first typed that line I used, let’s just say, a considerably higher number. I backed off because I assume that many if not most folks on HO aren’t familiar with the billing rates of corporate lawyers and there was little point getting into the weeds on that. $800 for an eight hour day is good income for most folks. As for me personally, I spent a good part of my career working on large international projects that involved platoons of expensive corporate lawyers, and yes the thrust of your remark is valid – I’m familiar with their rates. Probably most of them do buy their ghee in the very rare case that they even know what it is, or even know how to boil water for that matter. Maybe Bkeats will weigh in.
