Sure, I could write today’s article about the latest revelations concerning the coup d’état that overthrew internet freedom, the deep state’s global war on populist movements, the strange way in which pharma has colonized our bodies, the morally egregious pillaging of whole populations through central banking and inflation, or even touch on the astounding fragility of our rights and liberties.
But, hey, we also have to live good lives, right? We cannot just wallow forever in doom. In this case, it comes down to the little choices we make in our lives, food among them.
A few months ago, I saw a product on the shelf of an Indian/Persian-focused small grocery store. It is called Ghee. There were many varieties available. I didn’t think much about it but its existence sort of stuck in my head, and I kept going back to look at it.
To be sure, there are some strange foods out there that I’m not really ready to try, much less integrate in my life. Another store in town seems to specialize in selling very odd animal parts for which I simply cannot believe there is a market but there is. Not interested. Yes, such choices are culturally determined and not strictly rational but there it is.
There are reasons why some foods are common in some nations but not others. We should all be fine with that. We can decline to participate while still understanding why some groups like the thing we find yucky.
As I looked at the jar of Ghee and asked around, it appeared to be nothing but cow-milk butter, but rendered butter. It was cooked at a high temperature to separate the oils from the fat. The clarified butterfat rises to the top and can be poured off, leaving the curd at the bottom of the vessel.
That seems like a product that would be produced on every American dairy farm, doesn’t it? And yet I’ve never seen it on a shelf in a normal U.S. store. In this Indian-subcontinent-focused store, it is a mainstay. As it turns out, Ghee has a tradition of a thousand years of use in cooking but also in Hindu rituals, used even for lighting lamps. It’s the real deal.
Why have I never heard of it? I don’t know the answer. In any case, I decided to take the risk and snag some.
What can I say? You simply cannot believe how wonderful this stuff is.
Let’s start with the obvious. When you use butter in cooking, you know for sure that you cannot fry anything in it unless it is rather watery. This is because butter has a very low smoke point. You just get going on something and the butter burns, filling your house with smoke and pretty much ruining the dish. Knowing from experience that this is not possible, people turn to using other oils besides butter.
With Ghee, that problem goes away entirely. It has a very hot smoke point: an astounding 485 degrees Fahrenheit. That is better than olive oil and even lard, tallow, and goose fat. Only avocado oil is higher.
Plus you get this amazing and rich butter flavor. You can use it for fish especially but everything works in it, from vegetables like sweet potatoes to green beans. It’s incredibly versatile. I’ve not used it for popcorn but I can imagine that it would be perfect.
The product is rather expensive, you will observe, but actually maybe not as much in actual use. This is because you don’t need much. A tablespoon is enough to fry up almost anything in a pan. Again, the high smoke point means that every single drop of the stuff ends up being deployed in the cooking process. That means that a jar of Ghee could last you longer than a gallon of olive oil. In any case, the flavor is far better and so are the results.
Again, I’m astounded that this is not a mainstream American product. I simply cannot understand why! Maybe the answer is that cultural habits are very strong and extremely hard to break even when there is a huge reason to do so. In any case, you don’t have to obey them. I’m right now seeing Ghee all over Amazon and other sites, so thank you internet!
Trust me please: you will adore this product.
You know, something tells me there is more than culture at work here. The struggle over what oil we are supposed to use is very old, stretching back three quarters of a century.
Before World War Two, the normal fats people would use in cooking were lard, tallow, and various poultry fats. Here we are today and what do people use? Seed oils, including peanut, sesame, corn, and goodness knows what else. How the heck did this happen?
In 1943, in the name of conserving resources for the war effort, the federal government started a rationing program. On the list was lard and butter. It was hard to come by. The popular understanding was that it was needed for the war in some sense, so consuming it became a sign of being unpatriotic.
Millions died and we know that but somehow this detail has always stuck out in my mind. I think of it very often when I’m cooking and consider what it would be like to do so without fats at all. I simply cannot imagine it. Seems like a nightmare.
In any case, back to the United States in wartime, the rationing of lard created of course a market opportunity. The product called Crisco had first been invented as a lard substitute in 1911. It was made entirely of vegetable oil but kind of looked like lard. Suddenly in WWII it started gaining new popularity among an entire generation of homecooks. When the war ended, the popularity stuck. It became the oil to use and this habit persisted through the 1950s and following.
Somehow lard and tallow came to be disparaged, probably due to a basic language confusion: fat makes you fat. The less “fat” was in your fat, the less fat you would be. That’s a ridiculous idea and the opposite is likely true under many circumstances but there it was.
In the early 1970s, the U.S. agricultural planners decided to massively subsidize the planting of corn and grains like soy. The surpluses were so huge that prices kept falling to make all resulting products of them cheaper than the original. So lard and tallow disappeared eventually. Even McDonalds stopped using tallow in frying and started using other oils.
That’s also when margarine replaced butter. Incredibly, the stuff earlier in the century used to be made from beef fat (dyed yellow) but during the 1950s, it became a product of corn, with added color. They said “I can’t believe it’s not butter” but, yes, you can certainly believe it. It is absolutely not butter.
The history of Cool Whip is similar. A non-dairy creamer means it has no cream. It’s corn! It also came of age during the postwar turn against animal fats and oils.
Even now, there is some popular association between lard and being fat. Instead people use cottonseed, corn, soy, and so on, instead of animal fats. The option of olive oil is considered to be a luxury to be used only by fancy people, while animal-based oils are largely seen as a strange and dangerous eccentricity.
Did Ghee somehow get caught up in the anti-fat campaign? Perhaps. We cannot say for sure. All I can say is that this is entirely unjustified. Ghee is the perfect oil to use in so much home cooking. It’s tremendous. Give it a try. It’s so good, it will help you forget that the world around you is falling apart.
