Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Elk Roast

Elk roast is, in a word, wonderful.

About 8 hours in the slow cooker with  beef stock, generous amounts of garlic and onion, and a few gold potatoes, the meat was tender, flavorful and juicy, despite being very lean. DELISH!


Thursday, February 14, 2013

DIY Ghee

I made ghee.

Ghee is like clarified butter. But super clarified. Ghee is butter fat. Butter minus the extras.

Maybe I should have chosen a nice organic, grass-fed butter. But I didn't have that, so I just used regular unsalted butter.

Put it the pan and melt it with the heat on a low-medium temperature (avoid burning it).


It will start to bubble pretty quickly. That's the water steaming off. Keep going.

 
Then it will start to look like foam. Keep going, but don't forget about it.
 
 
Then little golden brown bits will stick to the sides of the pan, and fall to the bottom. Now you're getting the ghee.
 
 
When the bits are pretty golden brown, and sticking to the pan or falling to the bottom, strain the ghee- I used triple thick cheese cloth.  Check out all the nasty bits:
 
(Not sure why my picture is vertical instead of horizontal...)
 
I'll probably upgrade to a washable fabric (or nylon) filter later. The cheese cloth got pretty nasty, so I won't be reusing it. Luckily I cut the section I used, so I still have lots left over.
 
The pan was pretty gross looking too:
 
(Again, with the picture...)
 
And you're left with honey colored ghee:
 
 
 
 It was very hot, so I let it cool before moving it to a plastic container. I'll probably use a glass container in the future, but this was clean and handy:


I used 3.5 sticks of butter which produced about 1.5-1.75 cups of ghee. You'll end up with about 80% volume after removing the water and milk solids.