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I was mixing wet ingredients together for a muffin recipe, and I prepared the eggs, water and vanilla extract. I melted Ghee butter in the microwave, and tried to cool it down some. I then combined the eggs/water/vanilla and melted ghee together, and that is where I have been having problems. Some of what I did:

1) Parts of the Ghee started to harden, causing chunks

2) The eggs did come out of the fridge; the water was roughly room temperature, maybe a bit below

I don't know if that would happen if I used normal butter instead of Ghee, but is there an optimal way to melt Ghee, and not have it harden and have everything mix together well?

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  • Combined which two together?
    – FuzzyChef
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 4:00
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    Butter melts at about 90 F. I'd assume that ghee would actually melt at a bit higher temperature. So adding eggs cold from the fridge would also certainly drop the temperature enough to solidify the ghee.
    – MaxW
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 4:31
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    Why are you using ghee? Is that what the recipe calls for?
    – GdD
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 8:52
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    Ghee is a very unusual thing to use for a muffin recipe. Are you sure the recipe calls for Ghee? Generally Ghee will almost always start to harden into chunks when cooled.
    – Ess Kay
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 9:09
  • @GdD the recipe calls for butter - I was trying to use Ghee as a replacement.
    – Brian Mains
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 12:58

2 Answers 2

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There's two methods for this, which can also be combined.

The first, as several people have mentioned, is to make sure that the eggs and water are slightly above room temperature. At 27C/80F ghee (and, for that matter, butter) is liquid, so if you can ensure that the rest of the batter is that temperature, it will stay liquid when mixed. The easiest way to do this is to heat the water (to, say, 35C). Make sure to let the ghee cool a bit before adding, though, otherwise you may cook the eggs.

The second method is the one used for French sweet crepes, where you must add melted butter to a cold batter. In this method, you rapidly agitate the batter (using a whisk or a blender) while pouring the butter in, in a thin stream. The butter still solidifies, but it hardens into tiny pieces which are well distributed in the batter.

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If the ghee was too hot, the eggs would cook on contact with it, so you can simply increase the temperature. Melting it in a heavy bowl (ceramic or Pyrex) would hold a bit more heat, even at sensibly low temperature, so that might help. You may have let it cool too much - it will drop to just above it's melting point, then the addition of cold stuff will take up the latent heat required for it to solidify.

Allowing the eggs to come up to room temperature would help, but the easiest thing might be to take the chill off the water - using near-boiling water for about one part in three or four with the rest cold is a common way to do this in breadmaking, for example. Many muffin recipes use milk, and that can be warmed just a little in the microwave.

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    I would still advise to use room temperature eggs, that creates much tastier baking goods, even if you don't have to do it to avoid clupms.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 9:21
  • @rumtscho as my eggs are always at room temperature, I've never had the chance to compare, but I believe you
    – Chris H
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 11:57
  • A quick hit on Google suggests using half Ghee and half water/milk (preferrably warmed as Chris said) though not recommended to replace butter with Ghee due to different textures.
    – Ess Kay
    Commented Oct 25, 2018 at 13:17

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