How to check the purity of ghee at home? 6 simple DIY tests.
How to check the purity of ghee at home without spending too much money or in fact making it easy as well, is what my idea is.
Because ghee is one the most ancient super-foods from the Indian subcontinent, it made me feel that the overall process need not be very complicated, as this could have been easily performed by a lot of people at home, back then.
Of course, ghee was made at home for home consumption back then, but, a lot of people still exchanged food or borrowed or import it from external sources for some reasons, like gifting.
Yes, ghee was considered a sacred and very precious gift back then.
Yet, for safety reasons, people were performing purity checks.
Sometimes, beyond intentions also, there are reasons for you to be sure of.
And in today’s age, trust is most challenged by the health and food industry globally. And preparing ghee at home has been a great challenge and most of the urban population has been sourcing ghee from other places.
This is why it is important to keep a check on its purity because purity ignorance can make or break your health regime. So if you check the purity of ghee yourself then you are sure about your health.
So, after thorough research, I have listed down the various test types which can be easily performed at home.
I would like to actually begin by mentioning a critical fact that many ghee brands try mixing vanaspati in your ghee and which is nothing less than harmful to health.
So it is very important to actually check the vegetable oil-based tests.
Let us begin understanding why vanaspati adulteration check is important.
Vanaspati adulteration in cow ghee:
Vanaspati ghee is actually pseudo ghee because it is extracted from vegetables and not milk. It is also called dalda ghee.
A lot of commercial brands mix vanaspati with milk-based ghee to enhance their profits and fool the consumers.Â
And the presence of trans fat and saturated fat in vanaspati ghee actually turns out to be unhealthy for you.
How to check the purity of ghee through a Freeze Test:
Keep the ghee in the transparent container and keep it in the refrigerator for some time.
If you find layers in it then the ghee is impure. Pure ghee will not form layers after freezing.
Heat Test for checking the purity of ghee:
The pure ghee when burnt will melt immediately and turn into a brownish color, if it takes time to melt and becomes yellow in color, then you might have made a wrong choice.
Hand test:
Take ghee in your hand (palm). And pure ghee needs even a room temperature to melt, as it is a good conductor of heat.
Sugar and Ghee:
In a plastic container, add some sugar and then some melted ghee. After closing the container, shake it well. Really well.
If you find any reddish color in the ghee, then it certainly contains some impurity of the vegetable oils.
Starch levels:
Do you know that boiled potatoes are mixed with ghee? Yes, some commercial companies do that to increase their profits.
But, how to detect that? Because potatoes contain starch in it, we can do a starch test by mixing iodine with them.
If you add one teaspoon ghee (melted) and a pinch of iodine. If it turns into purple or blue color, then it shows it has starch-based impurities in it.
And if the color of iodine doesn’t really change a lot then ghee has no starch-related adulteration in it.
Where to buy Laboratory-grade Iodine for a starch test? Click here for the Amazon search results and you will find the iodine for these starch tests. Surely, worth an investment for once.
Boiling method:
The boiling method to test the purity of ghee is to test if there is any impurity in the form of coconut oil in your ghee. This one is a little longer than the other ones, but, simple too.
Step-1: Take your ghee in a glass vessel and heat it for a couple of minutes.
Step-2: And after 2-3 minutes of the gap, heat it again for a couple of minutes.
Step-3: Put the glass vessel containing this ghee in the refrigerator. If you find two different layers in it, then, one layer is ghee and the other one is coconut oil.
Some commercial ghee brands add coconut oil in ghee to increase profits. 1kg pure desi cow A2 ghee comes at more than Rs 2000 and 1kg coconut oil comes at around Rs 600-900, could be lower if the quality is compromised again.
This is how your ghee is compromised and so is your health.
More tips on checking purity of ghee at home
All these tests work well in understanding the difference. I would recommend checking the purity of ghee at home (any specific brand) 2-3 times at least.
What I mean with this is – certainly, you will close the doors for the ones failing the test.
But even for those who are passing the test, try testing their next batch and the next batch.
And even after 3 attempts the results are in favor of purity then you may zero down on that brand and trust them.
Still, you might want to just keep testing after every 4th or 5th purchase to ensure consistency in their quality.
Sure-shot identification of pure ghee
If getting the purest form of ghee is your need then here is the checklist –
- The process of making ghee MUST be traditional BILONA process, otherwise, the nutrition might be lost.
- The milk must be unadulterated. No point in buying ghee made out of adulterated milk.
- Milk must be converted to curd before the BILONA process, ghee from milk cream is not the real ghee.
The brands making their ghee from process compromising any of the above must be avoided.
The companies following all the above criteria will most likely give you authentic and pure ghee.
So make sure to check if all the above checkpoints are followed by the ghee maker.
Purity of Ghee at Hous of Life
At Hous of Life, we maintain our own cows – desi breeds like Gir cow and Kankrej cow, Tharparkar, Badree, Sahiwal, Haryanvi, and Rathi.
Hous of life feeds these cows the real green food and the highly nutritious solids. So that their milk is highly nutritious and also is the ghee.
With the rising demand for Gir cow ghee across the world, a lot of brands have started impurifying or manipulating the ghee. But at Hous of Life, we do not compromise on purity because impure ghee is actually not ghee.
We also follow the authentic process of milk to curd to white maakhan, with a hand-churning method called BILONA in the process.
And if you really want to understand the meaning of the real purity in ghee, then, you must check this insightful and impactful list of factors that makes the ghee pure in a real sense. I’m sure you will be blown away by that.
So which type of test will you try to check the purity of ghee at your home?
And once you check the purity of ghee of any brand, then please do share your experience in the comments with us below.
And in case if you have any questions like following the process or struggle with any of the tests for checking the purity of your ghee then you can always write in the comments below and I will be happy to answer.
Eat pure. Eat authentically. Live pure.
Stay healthy!
