Ghee is the cornerstone of several cuisines in India. However, little is known about its regional variants. Aditya Raghavan explores the nuance and terroir of ghee.

The most interesting ghee I have tasted comes from the Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh. At 4,300 metres altitude, Demul in Spiti is one of the highest villages in the world. On the arid, leeward side of the Himalayas, water is a scarce resource and most of the foliage is reduced to shrubs and small trees. People depend entirely on domesticated animals for their survival. Dung from churrus — a local breed of cow-yak — is painstakingly collected by villagers every day of summer, despite the laborious task of walking up and down the terrace fields, as it is a necessary energy source to keep homes warm in winter. Butter and ghee form a most crucial food source.

Milk from churrus is collected everyday and poured into a large wooden contraption with a capacity of about fifty litres, to be churned. Roughly once in ten days, the continuously fermenting milk is churned into butter. This butter has all sorts of complexity to it: from the lactic notes of buttermilk, to the more piquant notes of cheese (imagine the aroma of Parmigiano Reggiano), and even the elusive flavours of 2-Heptanone — a flavour compound produced in blue cheese. The ghee made from this butter has a delicious punch, inspiring my imagination to ask questions like, “Would this not pair perfectly with a hot mooli parantha?”