Probiotic Ghi: !e De"nitive Pictorial GuideWelcome to my probiotic ghi-making class. We’re going to explore a very scienti!c approach to making tradi-tional probiotic ghi (also spelled “ghee”), as taught to me by Vaidya R.K. Mishra and Professor Michael Lerom.

What Is Ghi?"is remarkable substance is as close to liquid gold as humans can experience. It is a highly auspicious and deeply nourishing essence of milk. In fact, it’s the cream of the cream, reducing milk to its most divine core. Milk itself, in Ayurveda, the world’s oldest and most complete system of prevention and natural medicine, is considered a rich supplier of soma. Along with its partners marut (managerial etheric energy) and agni (activat-ing transformative solar energy), soma is an embedded energy within prana (the life-supplying basic energy of the universe). When we eat, food is transformed by agni, with the resulting material intelligently transported (marut) around the body to nurture it (soma). Milk, properly prepared and digested, gives us lots of soma.

Soma is the stabilizing, lubricating, nurturing, cooling, and connecting energy associated with the moon, con-verted into kapha (the principle of intelligence in the body related to structure and #uid balance; kapha is lubri-cating and nurturing) and ojas (biological intelligence; the quintessence of our bodily tissues, o$en equated with immunity; the !nest end-product of digestion) in the physiology.

Ghi is an essential part of a healthy diet, due to its generous helping of soma-predominant prana and to its support for agni. "at being said, it’s crucial to make authentic probiotic ghi. What sets this ghi apart from even organic store-bought products is the culturing of cream as the !rst step. "e culture infuses the ingredients with very lively prana, so that the resulting ghi is completely intelligent and healthful. Don’t accept imitations, or shortcuts. Less re!ned ghi can clog large and small channels in the physiology and give rise to illness.

Chemically, ghi is the end result of a clari!cation process beginning with butter’s three gross components: water, butter oil, and milk fat solids. "ough there are four classical methods for making ghi—creamery-butter ghi (described herein), butter-strati!cation ghi, direct-from-butter ghi, and desi-butter ghi—the end result is the same. "e water is removed, and the butter oil is heated in the presence of the milk fat solids until phospholipids known as cephalins, along with other chemicals, transfer from the milk fat solids to the butter oil. "en, the but-ter oil, transformed into ghi, is separated from the milk fat solids. You may be asking, “Does all that resultant fat really have my arteries’ best interests in mind?” "e good news is that not all fats are created equal. Ghi compris-es mainly short- and medium-chain fatty acids, you know, the good kind of fat.

If this series of events isn’t truly alchemical, it’s at least magical. Note that there are so many ways you can cut corners when making ghi. I won’t bother to tell you what any of them are so you won’t be tempted. If you do nothing else in your life according to Hoyle, make ghi without compromise—A to Z. If you buy it premade, be sure that it was done according to my outlined steps.

Kitchen Essentials"e most important must-have is organic heavy whip-ping cream. If you can get raw heavy whipping cream, from 100% grass-fed cows, that’s the best. Given the scarcity of this nectar, I use Organic Valley brand, which, though pasteurized, is at least from 100% organic grass-fed cows. OV has two versions of this, and I have to special order the correct type. Insist on pasteurized cream, rather than ultra-pasteurized, for two reasons. Ultra-pasteurization burns soma out of the cream; also, the ultra-pasteurized version has carrageenan (seaweed) mixed in, for some incomprehensible reason. Two pints will yield two jars of ghi.

by Paul Wilson

"e culture is to the cream as Sears is to Roebuck, Astaire is to Rogers, Castor is to Pollux, and as…well, you get the idea. Great cream deserves top-notch cul-ture, and the gold standard for probiotic health is the Bulgarian strain in Natren.

A good yogurt maker makes the process very reliable. I get good results with the Euro Cuisine Automatic Yogurt Maker.

A$er disappointments and much research, I’ve discov-ered the world’s top cheesecloth, put out by Regency Naturals. It can be ordered online, and Bed Bath & Beyond carries it in the stores.

A KitchenAid stand mixer does a great job churning butter out of cultured cream. "ere are other tools one can use, and some say each one gives somewhat di%erent results. But, the KitchenAid is fast and e%ec-tive.

“"e cows yield butter and milk inexhaustiblefor thee set in the highest summit.” — Rk Ved IX 2.7

"e ultimate tool, and one that has lots of other utility in the kitchen, is an infrared thermometer. Ghi-making requires lots of pinpoint, quick temperature reading, and this is the only way to go. I picked up my OEM-brand thermometer at AutoZone. It will also come in handy when you do radiator work on your Edsel.

If you need jars, I recommend Container & Packaging Supply, item G028, with matching lid L030W. A good choice for a cooking pot is a Corning Vision Ware pot, available on eBay. "ey have fairly even heating that is less likely to burn soma out of the ghi during cooking. I !nd that the transparency also helps me see the condi-tion of the sediment on the bottom of the pan, which is important to get the ghi just right.

"e subtlest requirement is a proper environment. Ghi has special characteristics that make it highly absor-bent, both physically and energetically. A ghi kitchen should be quiet and peaceful, with a happy, settled, and saintly cook. Don’t bring anger or agitation into the ghi kitchen during preparation. It is best to make ghi during a waxing moon, when soma is on the rise in the environment, and even more best to make it within a few hours before a full moon. "e famous mahamrityunjaya mantra is very good to chant or play a continuous recording of during the process. A very nice version is found here: http://bit.ly/19JwDU3.

Let’s BeginBrie#y shake two pints of cream and then pour into a medium-sized pot. Heat the cream on medium until it foams up and begins to climb the sides of the pot, as shown in the picture on the le$. Let it cool to about 125–130° F. Pour it into a mixing bowl. Stir quickly with a whisk until the temperature comes down to about

112° F. Add 2.25 teaspoons of culture. Stir quickly with the whisk until the culture powder is mixed in very thor-oughly, perhaps 30–60 seconds. In the picture to the right, the culture has not yet been stirred in, and you can see it #oating in clumps.

Pour the mixture into a measuring cup and then into !ve very clean jars from the yogurt maker.

Avoid placing any of the jars in the middle of the yogurt maker. "is spot runs a bit warm and can overheat the cream yogurt. Set the yogurt maker for six hours. Don’t cook the yogurt with the jar lids on.

Finished cream yogurt will have a nice layer of butter-fat on top. You’ll be tempted to stop there and be content with just the custardesque result, but keep going! Place the lids on the jars and chill in the refrigerator for several hours.

Place the cold yogurt in the bowl of your KitchenAid. "e correct temperature for churning butter is about 60° F. You can let the bowl sit around for quite a while warming up, or you can speed the process by placing it in a sink with warm water. Stir and check the temperature with the infrared thermometer. Don’t let it get too warm.

“He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle,and herbs for the service of man.” — Psalms 104.14

Now the fun begins. Place the bowl in the KitchenAid base, install the wire beater, lock the arm, and begin to churn at one of the higher speeds. Within a few minutes, you’ll see the cream transform into whipped cream, getting thick and swirly. Again, you’ll be tempted to stop, add honey, and start eating. Don’t. Behave.

You can turn down the speed a bit. "e whipped cream will soon become liquidy and sloshy.

At that point, put your bowl’s plastic lid in place and stu% any holes with paper towels. As you keep churning

at lower and lower speeds, you’ll get two distinct compo-nents appearing: a) the most perfect yellow butter you’ve ever seen and b) buttermilk. When they’ve fully sepa-rated and are trying their best to slop out and ruin your kitchen, you’re !nished. Your reward for this much hard work—a$er being good and not having either the cream

yogurt or the whipped cream—is real buttermilk, also known as takra. "is is a probiotic wonderment, more powerful and assimilable than fresh yogurt, renowned by cognoscenti, and indeed the same, genuine magic authentic elixir used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the pharaohs of Egypt, consumed by Cleopa-tra while she !rst saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. And so on and so on.

"at’s a joke. I’ll be here all week folks.

“You are become such as have the need of milk, and not of strong meat.” — Hebrews 5:12

Next, use a #exible rubber spoon to press the takra out of the butter. "is will take a few minutes of elbow grease. Pour o% the takra till there’s not much le$ to extract.

It is said that no ailment of body or limb is beyond the power of takra to cure. Don’t drink it at night, but de!-nitely do have it within hours of making. Takra is full of yoginis, highly intelligent bacteria ideally suited to mak-ing your digestive system healthy, and you want to get them in your system before they lose the blush of youth. Within a few hours, they’ll already be graduating from high school, so act fast.

Transfer the butter (you’d like to slather some on toast right now, yes?) to the cooking pot. Set your burner on the lowest possible setting. We’re going to take our time, making ghi over the lowest heat possible. As the butter begins to melt, stir it every so o$en, always clockwise (which adds yet more prana).

Begin playing the mahamritunjaya mantra and make sure the kitchen vibes are just so.

We’re going to begin using the infrared thermometer more in earnest now. As they slowly warm, the three components of the butter will begin to disassociate. Water will be on the bottom (though we’ve squeezed most of it out already), butter oil will take up most of the pot, and milk fat solids will mostly rise to the top. When the

temperature gets closer to 200° F, the separation will be-come more and more distinct, and the water will liberate upward as bubbles and steam and maybe a few eruptions. Be careful you don’t get burned. You can stir the pot occa-

sionally, both to avoid burning the abundant soma and also to help the water to !nd its way back up to the clouds. Due to some wicked-complex physics principles—involv-ing phase transitions, speci!c heat, and maybe even triple points—the butter oil will resist serious heating until the water is gone. Arguably, you could get an entire semester’s worth of college thermodynamics out of a dedicated study of just what’s taking place in the pot before you.

When the temperature rises to about 205–210° F, stop stirring, at least from the bottom up. Leave the milk fat solids alone that have fallen to the bottom. "ey are settled in for some hard work and don’t want to be dis-turbed. You can move the milk fat solids on the top around, gently, both to even out their heating and also to open up gaps that make the bottom of the pot visible for infrared thermometer readings. Because the water is reduced, the temperature will rise faster.

“"e puri!ed soma juices have #owed forth, mixing with curd and milk. "ey are cleansed in the waters.” — Rk Ved IX 1.24

You might want to prepare your cheesecloth. One of my teachers, Vaidya R.K. Mishra, says that his mother used seven layers of cheesecloth. Not liking to be outdone, I go one better and use eight, placed in a large strainer atop a large glass mixing bowl.

At about 230° F, we’re getting into the red zone. "e ghi is beginning to take birth, as evidenced by the butter oil los-ing its cloudiness. Hello, phospholipids! "ere’s not much water le$ at this stage.

At about 240° F, we are almost done. "e large bubbles you saw earlier have changed to foam or froth. If you rub your !ngers together close to the surface, you will feel little moisture condensing on them.

At 250° F, keep parting the bubbles so you can get lots of quick temperature readings at various spots along the bottom. When they average about 253–255° F, and the solids on the bottom are a consistent dark brown, you, my friend, are !nished. If the solids have become black, you’ve scorched the ghi, and deserve no more happiness the rest of your days.

“Flow soma, in a most sweet and exhilarating stream.” — Rk Veda IX 1.1

You’re ready to pour. With tremendous Zen-like focus to avoid pouring scalding, instantaneous third- and maybe fourth-degree burn-producing ghi onto your person, pour or ladle the ghi through the cheesecloth. You want to do this quickly and not watch your favorite TV show instead. If the temperature drops below 200° F, the phospholipids so important to the ghi begin to crystallize out.

If the above is what you see on the bottom of the bowl, your right to happiness the rest of your days is secured. More tan or more black are not good signs. If you see lots of tan, keep the resultant ghi in the refrigerator be-tween uses.

Your cheesecloth should look like this.

Give the ghi a few minutes to cool and for any remaining water molecules to dissipate. Pour the ghi into a glass measuring cup and then into two glass jars. Put the lids on only a$er the ghi is below about 175° F to ensure that the seals on the lids don’t melt.

Marvel at the numinous beauty of what you’ve wrought.

Because ghi is light-sensitive, I suggest shi$ing the jars to a dark cabinet for the next few hours. When they are a bit warm but not still hot, move the jars to your refrigerator. "is will keep the crystals that will form small, and will prevent layer formation. Your !nal product a$er becoming cold will be as such:

Ghi has a long shelf life at room temperature, generally weeks or months, but it’s best to keep each jar refriger-ated till you have used other jars. Store it in the dark between meals and don’t get any water in it. You might try placing it in the light of each month’s full moon, too, to let it absorb a little more soma.

What’s in It for Me?Cooking with ghi is a delight. It has a high burning point and is an ideal base oil for healthful sauteed spices. I have attached a #yer from Vaidya Mishra, whose company, Chandi, LLC, is one of the only sources of qual-ity probiotic ghi, in which he gives you the lowdown on what it really does for you and why it’s more than just a pretty face.

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The Nature and Role of Real Ayurvedic Ghee