Ghee Preparation

Ayurvedic (Agnihotra) Ghee Preparation:

Preparing ghee for Agnihotra is a simple process and one can easily make it in ones own home. The procedure to be followed is as follows -

• The ghee is prepared from Cow’s milk.
• Take the cow milk in a kitchen vessel and heat it slowly on your stove or heater.
• Allow the milk to cool in the same vessel without keeping any lid. One may use a net to cover it if necessary.
• After a few hours a layer of cream will appear on the surface of the milk.
• Remove this layer using a spoon and collect it in a separate jar.
• Add a little curd to this cream in the jar.
• Allow the mixture to stand still.
• After about a day the cream in the jar would convert into curd.
• Repeat the procedure up to point no. 5 daily by adding cream to the same jar. There is no need to add curd daily; the cream added daily keeps converting to curd.
• After about a weeks time when sufficient amount (500 ml to 1 liter )of curd is collected, churn the curd thoroughly in a mixer or with a handheld portable churner. (The vessel used for churning should be sufficiently big to take all the curd and about as much water by volume)
  
• Add water to this and keep churning till butter starts separating on the surface of the liquid.
• Carefully collect the soft butter from the surface and put it in a frying pan, while doing this try to keep the liquid from coming in the frying pan. If some liquid does carry over in to the frying pan you can separate it by squeezing the butter with the open palm of one hand and tilting the pan with the other to drain as much liquid as possible.
• Wash this butter with water and drain away the water completely as before. Repeat this washing once again.
• Heat the butter over slow fire. Continue heating for a few minutes to ensure all the water content evaporates. You can judge this by the colour of the ghee, which becomes golden and the boiling stops.
• The Ghee is ready. Allow it to cool and filter it through a fine strainer. Store in a dry jar with a lid.