No Review- The Magic of Ghee

As much as I love Indian food in the form of an all-you-can-eat buffet, I also like to attempt to recreate its spicy goodness in the comforts of my own home. Many recipes for Indian dishes call for either ghee or vegetable oil to fry up diced onion, ginger, garlic, green chilis, etc.. Since I rarely plan ahead, and there aren't any Indian groceries within roughly 30 miles of where I live, I would choose the latter, seeing how I could grab it at my local grocery store. The final product would come out much more bland. I still would find myself dumbstruck as to how to recreate the creaminess. Well, I finally picked up a jar of ghee at an Indian grocery in Lowell. This particular jar of ghee was made by Swad (they also make instant Indian meals). "What is ghee?" one may ask. Clicking the 'ghee' hypertext will bring you to Wikipedia's definition. In the English speaking world, we call it 'clarified butter'. Upon opening the jar out of my natural curiosity as a human being, my first observations of the product was that it reminded me of popcorn butter in both the way it looked and smelled. I took it home and proceeded to make this saag recipe that I had made before (sans ghee). I could already tell, during the cooking process, that this was gonna taste better. The smell was so much more savory. In the end, the saag paneer came out much smoother/creamier than when I used vegetable oil. The ghee made a world of difference. It is fattier than veg. oil, but we can't always align taste and health, look at Southern cooking.