Ghee made the traditional way starts long before anyone lights a stove. It starts the night before, when boiled milk is cooled and a spoon of yesterday's curd goes in to set it.
Early morning: churning
By morning the curd has set firm. It goes into a tall pot and is churned with a wooden churner, the bilona, pulled back and forth with a rope. It is slow work. After a while small flecks of butter start to rise, then gather into soft lumps of makkhan. What is left behind is chaas, which nobody wastes.
Lifting the butter
The butter is lifted out by hand and rinsed in cold water. Rinsing matters: leftover buttermilk in the butter burns during cooking and changes the smell of the ghee.
Slow heat
The butter goes into a heavy kadhai on low heat. First it melts and foams. The water cooks away with a gentle crackle. When the crackling stops and the smell turns nutty, the ghee is ready. Take it too far and it browns and tastes bitter, so the last few minutes need someone standing right there.
Straining and setting
The clear ghee is strained away from the brown bits at the bottom and poured into clean, dry jars. As it cools it sets, often with a grainy texture. That grain is simply how slowly cooked ghee behaves.
It is a lot of curd for a little ghee, which is the honest reason this kind of ghee costs more.
