By Elizabeth Herman ┃Posted: July 11, 2018
Do you avoid eating fat at all costs? How much do you know about which fats help, and which ones hurt?
“Science has shown that not all fats are created equal,” says Michael Fischman in his introduction to this podcast on ghee. Although many over processed foods contain unhealthy fats, the healthy ones are in high demand for individuals concerned about good nutrition.
In an interview with two professional ghee makers, the benefits of ghee are discussed fully. Ghee or clarified butter is referred to as the ‘golden nectar’ because of its potent gut nourishing and health promoting properties. This healthy fat can even be helpful for patients with high cholesterol.
Sandeep Agarwal, whose family has been making and selling ghee for 5 generations, founded Pure Indian Foods to preserve his family’s tradition. Nancy Rohr and Bev Martin, also known as the Ghee Gals, founded Simply Ghee in 2012. These are the ghee makers featured here.
Quotes from the podcast
Bev Martin says, “We decided we were going to introduce ghee to America, because many people just associated it with Indian cuisine. And with what I had learned about it being such a healthy fat, we wanted to be more mainstream with it. We use a 100% grass fed organic butter from Lancaster County here. It’s just beautiful. It’s so yellow and amazing. It’s sweet cream, it’s unsalted, and from there we actually process it on the stove tops.”
Nancy Rohr says, “Now we’re up to producing 420 pounds in one run, so we really jumped up in the amount of butter that we’re using. We have five people helping us, so we start with butter in 55 pound blocks, and from there it becomes a really gentle melting process where the liquids start to separate until it comes to a liquid state.”
Ghee making is a family endeavor. About his wife’s authority over the creation process, Agarwal says, “She does have staff, she does have help, but she is the one who is making it because making ghee is an art. There’s no exact science, and what I mean is that when you are simmering butter, at a certain point there is a beautiful aroma that comes out of the pot, and she knows exactly when to turn the heat low and when to increase it, so she has to be there for every batch that we are making.”
According to Fischman, “There are a number of sources of very high quality ghee here in the United States, and, of course, India produces wonderful ghee. But it also produces some inferior ghee that can trick you if you don’t know what to look for. So be sure to read the labels. When you’re buying ghee, make sure it’s not vegetable ghee, which is not made from butter, but from hydrogenated vegetable oil.
Some commercial ghee from India is made from buffalo’s milk, which has twice the butterfat content of cows. According to Ayurvedic doctors, this milk doesn’t have the same purifying and healing qualities as cow’s milk.
I’d recommend making your own ghee, which is really simple to do. But if that’s not possible, make sure you’re purchasing quality ghee that’s made from organic, grass fed cows. And enjoy!”
Links
You can find all of Michael’s podcasts on Back to the Source Radio and the one on ghee, the golden nectar, here.
They are also available on iTunes and Google Play.
By Elizabeth Herman - PhD in English, with concentrations in Rhetoric and Composition, and Literature, she offers writing support to clients, teaches locally, and lives in Boone, NC. With a longtime keen interest in Yoga and Ayurveda, she recently completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training with Sri Sri School of Yoga.
