Ghee

Opened ghee keeps about 3 months in a cool dark pantry or up to a year refrigerated — extraordinary numbers for a dairy product, and entirely down to what has been removed from it.

Refrigeration is optional rather than required, which is unusual here. A cool, dark cupboard away from the stove is fine for a few months. Refrigerate it if you want the longest possible life or if your kitchen runs warm.

The one rule that matters: keep water out of the jar. Always use a clean, completely dry spoon. A single drop of water, or a crumb carried in on a wet utensil, reintroduces the moisture the whole process was designed to eliminate and creates a site where mold can grow.

Keep the jar tightly closed and out of direct light. Light and air drive oxidation, which is ghee's only real enemy.

Ghee solidifies and turns grainy when cold and clears when warm — both are normal.

Ghee is butter with the two spoilable components taken out, and that is the entire explanation for its shelf life.

Butter is roughly 16% water and 2% milk solids — protein and lactose — dispersed through butterfat. Those are the parts bacteria and mold can use. Making ghee means simmering butter until the water boils off entirely and the milk solids settle and brown, then straining them out. What remains is close to pure butterfat, with a water activity so low that microbial growth is effectively impossible.

This is why ghee is shelf-stable while butter is not, and why it has been a staple in hot climates for millennia without refrigeration.

Removing the milk solids also raises the smoke point to around 485°F, since it was the milk proteins that burned, and it makes ghee tolerable for many people with lactose or casein sensitivity.

The remaining failure mode is oxidative rancidity — a chemical reaction between the fat and oxygen, accelerated by light and heat. Rancid ghee smells sharp, waxy, and stale rather than nutty and sweet, and it tastes bitter. This is a quality failure rather than a safety one, but it is the signal to replace the jar.

Any mold means discard, and it almost always means water got in.