Yes, you can bake with ghee, but it is not a one-for-one swap. Butter is about 81 per cent fat and 16 per cent water; ghee is about 99.5 per cent fat with almost no water. Use about 82 g of ghee for every 100 g of butter, and choose bakes that use melted fat rather than creamed butter. The rest of this article shows where those numbers come from.
At a glance
- Use about 82 g of ghee for every 100 g of butter: USDA's unsalted butter is 81.1 per cent fat and anhydrous butter oil, the analysed match for ghee, 99.5 per cent.
- Every 100 g of butter brings about 16 g of water that ghee does not; add water a teaspoon at a time only if the dough is drier than the recipe describes, and never more than the gap.
- By volume, use about nine-tenths of the butter's volume in ghee, on USDA spoon and cup weights.
- Ghee suits bakes written for melted fat or oil; creamed-butter recipes come out denser, and laminated pastry should stay with butter.
- Salted-butter recipes need a little added salt, since FSSAI allows table butter up to 3 per cent salt and ghee none.
Can you use ghee instead of butter in baking?
Yes, in many bakes. Ghee is milk fat with almost all the water and milk solids removed, so it brings the same kind of fat to a recipe. Two things change: there is less water, so you need less ghee by weight, and a recipe that relies on creaming a block of solid butter for lift needs rethinking.
That second point decides most cases. A recipe that melts its butter, or uses oil, is easy to convert. One that starts with "cream the butter and sugar" is harder. Laminated pastry we would not attempt at all.
What is the difference between butter and ghee for a baker?
Water. FSSAI defines butter as a water-in-oil emulsion made from milk, and ghee as a milk fat product made by processes that remove almost all of the water and milk solids-not-fat. On USDA figures, 100 g of unsalted butter holds about 16 g of water, and 100 g of anhydrous butter oil holds under a quarter of a gram.
For the ghee column we use USDA's record for anhydrous butter oil. FSSAI covers butter oil, anhydrous butter oil and ghee in a single standard for milk fat products, which is why it is a fair stand-in. For the fuller picture, our article on whether ghee is the same as clarified butter explains how the standards divide these products.
| Per 100 g | Butter, unsalted (USDA) | Anhydrous butter oil (USDA) | Table butter (FSSAI limit) | Ghee (FSSAI limit) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fat | 81.11 g | 99.48 g | at least 80.0 % | at least 99.5 % |
| Water (moisture) | 16.17 g | 0.24 g | at most 16.0 % | at most 0.5 % |
| Protein | 0.85 g | 0.28 g | not set | not set |
| Milk solids-not-fat | not listed | not listed | at most 2.0 % | "almost total removal" |
| Carbohydrate | 0.06 g | 0 g | not set | not set |
| Common salt | none added | not listed | at most 3.0 % | raw material: milk and milk products only |
| Energy | 717 kcal | 876 kcal | not set | not set |
USDA's butter is an American sample, and its 16.17 g of water sits just above FSSAI's 16.0 per cent cap for table butter, too small a gap to matter in a recipe. The FSSAI ghee column lists milk and milk products as the only raw material, with no added flavour, colour or preservative. FSSAI also recognises a white or cooking butter, which must hold at least 76 per cent fat and has no moisture limit, so white butter can carry more water than table butter.
How much ghee do you use to replace butter?
About 82 g of ghee for every 100 g of butter. That figure matches the fat: 100 g of USDA unsalted butter carries 81.1 g of fat, and ghee at 99.48 per cent fat delivers that in 81.5 g. Rounded up, roughly four-fifths of the butter's weight, with about 16 g less water going into the bowl.
The table shows the working, using USDA's percentages. USDA weighs a tablespoon of butter at 14.2 g and a cup at 227 g.
| Butter in the recipe | Fat it carries (× 0.8111) | Ghee for the same fat (÷ 0.9948) | Water from the butter (× 0.1617) | Water from the ghee (× 0.0024) | Water gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 tbsp (14.2 g) | 11.5 g | 11.6 g | 2.3 g | 0.03 g | 2.3 g |
| 50 g | 40.6 g | 40.8 g | 8.1 g | 0.1 g | 8.0 g |
| 100 g | 81.1 g | 81.5 g | 16.2 g | 0.2 g | 16.0 g |
| 200 g | 162.2 g | 163.1 g | 32.3 g | 0.4 g | 31.9 g |
| 1 cup (227 g) | 184.1 g | 185.1 g | 36.7 g | 0.4 g | 36.3 g |
If you measure by spoon or cup, USDA weighs a tablespoon of butter oil at 12.8 g and a cup at 205 g. So 11.6 g of ghee is 11.6 ÷ 12.8 = 0.91 tablespoon, and 185.1 g is 185.1 ÷ 205 = 0.90 cup. In practice, about nine-tenths of the butter's volume in ghee.
On FSSAI's minimums instead of USDA's averages, the answer barely moves. Table butter at the 80 per cent floor gives 80 g of fat per 100 g; ghee at 99.5 per cent supplies that in 80 ÷ 0.995 = 80.4 g. Either way, about 80 to 82 g of ghee per 100 g of butter.
To convert a recipe, in order:
- Weigh, do not swap by volume. Multiply the butter weight by 0.82 for the ghee weight.
- Note the water gap. It is about 16 g for every 100 g of butter, as the table shows.
- Mix first, then judge. If the batter or dough is noticeably drier or more crumbly than the recipe describes, add water a teaspoon at a time, up to the gap and no further.
- Check the salt. If the recipe used salted butter, add a little salt; FSSAI allows table butter up to 3 per cent common salt, while ghee's standard lists only milk and milk products as raw material.
- Bake a small batch first. Texture and spread are the parts the arithmetic cannot predict.
What changes when you bake with ghee instead of butter?
Mostly texture. Iowa State University Extension explains that solid butter traps air when creamed with sugar, giving fluffier cookies, while melted butter incorporates no air and gives denser, flatter, chewier ones. If you melt the ghee, as you would when converting a melted-butter recipe, that description of melted fat is the one to plan for.
The same Extension article describes two other effects of fat in cookies. When solid fat coats the gluten strands in the flour, it inhibits gluten and gives tenderness. On the other hand, the water in melted fat can bind with gluten and strengthen the structure, which is what makes some cookies chewy. It also notes that when butter is browned, its water evaporates, producing a very dense but flavour-rich cookie. Ghee, by the figures above, has almost no water to begin with.
Flavour changes too. FSSAI's standard notes that ghee has an especially developed flavour and physical structure as a result of its method of manufacture. We make no claim that one tastes better than the other. It is a choice of flavour, not of quality.
Which bakes suit ghee, and which do not?
Ghee suits bakes that already use melted fat or oil, and recipes written for ghee from the start. It is a poorer fit for recipes built on creamed butter, and we would not use it for laminated pastry. The deciding question is simple: does the recipe need a block of firm, solid fat, or just fat?
- Good fit: cookies and brownies that call for melted butter; cakes and quick breads made with melted butter or oil; biscuits such as nankhatai when the recipe is written for ghee. As one example of a ghee biscuit, a 1992 study from the M.S. University of Baroda settled on a recipe of 40 g wheat and Bengal gram mix, 40 g jaggery and 20 g ghee.
- Possible, with changes: creamed-butter cakes and cookies. Iowa State ties the puffiness of creamed cookies to creaming sugar into solid fat, and we found no tested evidence that ghee creams the same way, so plan for a denser crumb. A recipe written for melted fat is the safer start.
- Not recommended: puff pastry, croissants and other laminated doughs.
Laminated pastry is the clear exception. In a study of reduced-fat puff pastry published in Foods, Silow and colleagues describe the classic method: a piece of fat, traditionally butter, is wrapped in dough and folded and rolled many times. They write that the fat's job is to separate the many thin dough layers from each other, and that during baking, steam from the water in the dough expands between the layers and makes the pastry rise. They add that the cost and difficult handling of butter led industry to develop vegetable fat blends with better workability, which they call fat plasticity. We found no tested method for doing this with ghee, so we leave it to butter.
Does the ghee you choose matter for baking?
For the arithmetic, very little. Any ghee that meets FSSAI's standard is at least 99.5 per cent milk fat with no more than 0.5 per cent moisture, so the 82 g rule holds across brands. What differs is flavour, and whether you can check what is in the jar.
At Himdhara every jar of our A2 bilona ghee carries a batch code, and the laboratory report for each batch is published before it ships, so the milk fat and moisture figures can be compared with the FSSAI limits above. If you also cook with butter and oil, our guide to which fat to use when covers the stove side of the same choice.
One note on health. Swapping butter for ghee at the same fat leaves the fat in the bake about the same. If you are watching fats for a medical reason, follow your doctor's advice.
The short version
You can bake with ghee, but weigh it: about 82 g of ghee carries the same fat as 100 g of butter, and leaves out about 16 g of water. Ghee works best in bakes that already use melted fat, and in recipes written for ghee. Recipes that start by creaming solid butter need rethinking. Leave laminated pastry to butter. If a dough feels dry, add back a little water, never more than the gap in the table.
Sources
Further reading behind the figures above. Himdhara's own numbers — yields, batch results — come from our production records and the batch reports on the lab reports page.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (2019). Butter, without salt. FoodData Central (SR Legacy).
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (2019). Butter oil, anhydrous. FoodData Central (SR Legacy).
- Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (2022). Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011 (2.1.8 Standard for Milk Fat Products; 2.1.9 Standard for Butter). FSSAI compendium, version XXVI.
- Geiger M (2023). How Ingredients Affect "How the Cookie Crumbles". AnswerLine, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.
- Silow C, Zannini E, Axel C, Belz MCE, Arendt EK (2017). Optimization of Fat-Reduced Puff Pastry Using Response Surface Methodology. Foods.