Me And Bobby Eat Ghee (freedom's just another word for 'nothing left to eat')

April 20, 2008 5:25 PM

Would anyone in their right mind eat vegetable ghee, or any kind of ghee, straight from the can?

Good day. A while back I posted a question looking for info regarding a minor point in a novel I'm writing. I thank everyone for their input.

So here's another (weirder) question:

In the second half of the novel the narrator (the punk rocker), now in his twenties, has married a Canadian woman of Indian descent -- her family moved to Toronto when she was three. While she is pretty westernised, her diet includes a lot of Indian staples like rice and curry. She tries to introduce her husband to some of the foods her family eats, and he ends up snacking on a certain traditional food that seems natural to him (a white guy who tends to eat mostly fast foods), but in a manner that ends up mortifying his wife and amusing his Indian in-laws.

I had it in my head several years ago that he would develop a taste for eating vegetable ghee straight from the can. The only basing I have for this idea is a commercial I saw several years ago on one of the local multi-ethnic channels in Toronto which included some shots of happy Indian men and women eating what looked like white chunks of vegetable. Upon further inspection, it seems that ghee is a kind of butter made either from dairy or vegetable products.

Not knowing the taste of ghee, I am hesitant to claim that the narrator would start eating ghee 'out of the can' (or jar, as the case seems to be). Then again, when I was a kid I loved eating peanut butter by the spoonful, and some people have told me in no uncertain terms that eating straight peanut butter was disgusting, at least to them.

So is it possible that a westerner who doesn't know better would eat ghee in this manner? Or is there another Indian foodstuff I can substitute? Either way the wife has to be dismayed and/or horrified by her husband's actions, even if he's not doing himself any real harm in eating the food in a non-normal way.

(P.S. As of this writing I still do not have a publisher for this novel. It is possible that I may end up going to Lulu.com to print out copies once it's done. I'm still hoping to publish this thing properly -- four chapters to go! -- but otherwise don't go overboard thinking that you're helping out the next Norman Mailer or Margaret Atwood or whatever. But thanks in advance nonetheless!)

posted by spoobnooble to food & drink (32 comments total)

Eating a spoonful of ghee would be like eating a spoonful of solid, unmelted butter, but less tasty. I am of Indian descent and it would sound very unbelievable to me.
posted by shazzam at 5:31 PM on April 20, 2008

I would not eat Ghee, as it is really simply clarified butter and not exactly TASTY. I also would think that perhaps you are misidentifying the product they are consuming. Peanut butter and clarified butter are two completely different things.
posted by parmanparman at 5:32 PM on April 20, 2008

Ghee is clarified butter. I have known people who eat butter (straight up, or sprinkled with sugar) so I can believe eating straight ghee. As disgusting as that sounds.
posted by piratebowling at 5:36 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I will happily eat butter straight off the stick, which most people find appalling. So eating ghee (clarified butter, as I understand it) doesn't sound all that unbelievable to me.
posted by KAS at 5:42 PM on April 20, 2008

Ghee is clarified butter. I can't imagine a westerner (which includes myself) eating it solo for fun... that would be sort of like drinking melted butter. Ew.

What about condiments? Naan is often served with a tamarind sauce and a mint sauce; either of those would be more likely substances for abuse. I don't know their names, though, sorry.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:42 PM on April 20, 2008

Well this claims that vegetable ghee tastes like butter. Now I personally wouldn't eat butter out of a tub. But, if it were sweet butter, then I could see someone developing a taste for it.
posted by oddman at 5:42 PM on April 20, 2008

Maybe he could scoop some out with breadsticks, corn chips or pakora?

Clarified butter has even less taste than regular butter. To me it's more like a congealed oil.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:51 PM on April 20, 2008

Bleh, no way. It wouldn't sound believable to me, unless it's clear that snacking on regular butter is natural for him (and I'm not sure I'd find that very believable either!). I don't know enough about Indian food to pick an alternative though :-)
posted by miss cee at 5:54 PM on April 20, 2008

Another Indian (albeit born/grew up in the US) here. I don't buy it, either, but if you wanted to paint the character as a real oddball, it could, in theory, work. "Not knowing better" wouldn't be enough of an explanation, because all you have to do is taste it to realize this really isn't something you want to snack on. Ghee is like butter, but much "flatter" tasting.
posted by CommonSense at 6:01 PM on April 20, 2008

Ghee is clarified butter. I can't imagine a westerner (which includes myself) eating it solo for fun...

My great-aunt used to make us sugar and butter sandwiches when we were kids in order to fatten us up. (Didn't work, maybe she should have tried McDonalds). Then and as an adult I have been known to eat butter straight from the stick. With sugar is definitely better tho.
posted by fshgrl at 6:04 PM on April 20, 2008

ETA: I also like jellied eel and dulce so maybe I was just raised weird.
posted by fshgrl at 6:05 PM on April 20, 2008

Definitely change it to some other food! How about Lime Pickle? I had a friend who said that was popular for pregnant women, and I doubt your female character's family would look kindly upon him for eating lime pickle in huge amounts straight out of the jar. He could say 'eh, this is great stuff' and they'd all be staring at him like he had horns growing out of his head.

Definitely go to many Indian restaurants in your research as well as interviewing Indian people for their opinions. My friends came from all parts of India and they all had different cuisines as we do here in the states, and different recipes within each family, etc. One day we were all at lunch at an Indian restaurant and I had some dessert and my friend whispered, "this is awful, I make it so much better." Then she told me her recipe and also how her mother and grandmother had cooked various dishes from her home town (Bangalore).

Also try cooking Indian food at home (get cook books from the library or look up recipes online). I've made homemade paneer out of cow's milk and vinegar and lemon juice both, then a saag paneer with spinach (so paneer could be another thing your guy pigs out on, which she has in the fridge and is saving for a supper dish). Chutneys are very easy to make as well. The breads are the hardest, but doable if you have patience. Live the life of your characters and you will not only be able to write them in a believable manner, but you will have learned a new skill as well.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 6:10 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, eating ghee straight is sort of like eating Crisco straight. It's way fattier than butter is as it is, as others have pointed out, clarified butter. It's butter minus the water and protein, i.e. PURE FAT. Per Wikipedia "vegetable ghee" is what they sell as Crisco in North America, i.e. hydrogenated vegetable oil.
posted by GuyZero at 6:16 PM on April 20, 2008

Sounds like a fun novel! Are you able to get your hands on some ghee and taste it? I admit I've never had it other than as an ingredient in Indian dishes.

I did once watch with great amusement in a high school cooking class as my friend tasted a big blob of lard, convinced it was going to be like butter. It was most certainly not like butter.
posted by tomble at 6:18 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ghee, no way. It would be like drinking canola out of the bottle. Ugh.

However, I'm an abuser of Indian foodstuffs so I offer you from personal experience --

-- curry paste and cheese sandwiches
-- chili pickle from the jar, either eaten in big spoonfuls or again spread on bread and eaten with cheese.

If you want to go even more extreme, I could see curry paste and peanut butter sandwiches working.
posted by unSane at 6:31 PM on April 20, 2008

Not knowing the taste of ghee

Not only is ghee clarified butter (as many people have pointed out), but it's really easy to clarify butter, so you might as well try it and see what it's like eating straight.
posted by advil at 6:32 PM on April 20, 2008

Ghee is marginally fattier than butter; the amount, proportionally, of water and solids that are removed is pretty small.

The real issue, to me, would be the fact that the flavor of the butter was in those solids. Ghee tastes like lard or, as GuyZero said, Crisco. It would be a pretty peculiar acquired taste.
posted by bricoleur at 6:32 PM on April 20, 2008

Nthing that ghee isn't something that most people like the taste of plain. In fact there are certain Ayurvedic medicines that are meant to be eaten with ghee and I used to dread taking them as a kid. Much more plausible as someone said above, pickles. I've eaten them on their own before but would usually be warned about possible stomach aches if I did it too often. I don't think I'd call the reaction precisely horrified though, more indulgently disapproving. Another thing that I could see Indians being horrified to see someone eating on its own: sambar a lentil souplike substance that is meant to be eaten over rice. I could see an Indian being horrified at someone eating that with a spoon like soup. Would only work for South Indians though.
posted by peacheater at 6:35 PM on April 20, 2008

People will eat and drink all kinds of stuff that tastes bizarre or horrible from an out-of-culture perspective. Beer. Vegemite. Chilis. Fetta. Gherkins. Horseradish. Persimmons.

Seems entirely reasonable to me. Maybe the guy has a poor sense of taste and likes the texture. Maybe he has an extremely refined (but weird) sense of taste and finds it subtly different from butter or olive oil in a way that delights him.

If he just has to breach cultural conventions in some way (and how sensitive are those he offends?), serving it up with chili powder as a dipping sauce for breadsticks or chips might achieve that.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:36 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Subby here. So far it looks like ghee-from-the jar ain't flying. Though I'm watching the posts as they come in.

The 'lime pickle' suggestion sounds interesting. That reminds me of a story I'll post later in the thread (don't want to derail it just yet). Trust me, it's a good 'un.
posted by spoobnooble at 6:38 PM on April 20, 2008

See this comment in this thread. Basically, taking traditional Indian foods (naan, rice, etc) and cobbling them together into a burrito. Sounds a lot like what you're looking for: eating the food in a non-traditional but non-harmful way that nonetheless irked a native Indian.
posted by jedicus at 6:39 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

A more likely candidate for you would be coconut chutney. You wouldn't have to be nuts to eat that by itself, but it's just not done.
posted by zennie at 6:40 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

To me, ghee tastes like butter and caramelized milk sugars, like butter with a touch of toffee or dulce de leche. It smells lovely and is fantastic to cook with, spread on bread, etc., but I can't imagine someone eating much of it straight up...it's solid fat, after all. (I make it via the process in the first link, separating out the clarified butter. Enameled cast iron pots work well.)

I haven't tried it, but I suspect vegetable ghee would be less palatable than butter ghee.

It might not be a bad reality check to eat some yourself, you know?
posted by trouserbat at 6:51 PM on April 20, 2008

Oh, and I definitely second eating chutneys from the jar.
posted by trouserbat at 6:52 PM on April 20, 2008

Another chutney-from-jar eater adding to the pile.

It's delicious!
Or mango chutney on a brownie!
posted by Acari at 7:02 PM on April 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Eating plain rice with bread (chapati). My parents used to tease me for doing that. It would be kind of like making a sandwich of a slice of whole wheat toast on a hamburger bun.

On the other hand, my dad puts mango pickle on his english muffins and his oatmeal, so who's he to talk, huh? (It's pretty damn good that way too.)
posted by moonmilk at 7:38 PM on April 20, 2008

Agree with trouserbat- spread it on toast? Sure. Not straight from the jar.
posted by gjc at 7:55 PM on April 20, 2008

Lime Pickle (as well as Brinjal Pickle, Mustard Pickle etc) from the jar is awesome. As are most chutneys. My mum and I eat it all the time (Mum was born in Sri Lanka), but my (Australian born) dad can't bring himself to do so - so there is probably that avenue for cultural tastes. I also have been known to eat straight Vegemite, so maybe I have weird tastes. I can't say I've ever had straight Ghee though.
posted by cholly at 8:30 PM on April 20, 2008

No, no one would do this, as others have said.

Gotta admit I'm a bit baffled why you're doing your research here instead of just going to the store, buying some, and tasting it.
posted by dobbs at 6:26 AM on April 21, 2008

"Gotta admit I'm a bit baffled why you're doing your research here instead of just going to the store, buying some, and tasting it."

I'm not much of a connoiseur. I could live on spaghetti and Coke for the rest of my life and not care that I'm missing out. Besides, the diversity of opinion here makes for pretty good research in itself.

Speaking of weird tastes, here's that pickle story I mentioned earlier:

I have some friends who roomed together when they first moved to Toronto. One of the friends worked in film and TV, and earned pretty decent money. The other was a grad student, and often pretty skint. He got into a bad habit of eating food in the fridge that was not his. And he was a pretty voracious eater.

For instance, the first friend, who we'll call Bill, got a one-off gig on a film set doing gaffing and runing errands for his roomie, who we'll call Hoover. One of the cameramen had ordered Chinese food and ended up with one too many boxes of chow mein. He gave it to Hoover to eat. According to the cameraman, he had hardly turned around when he saw that Hoover had cleared out the entire serving of chow mein, as if he had inhaled it. Or "hoovered" it, as it were.

Anyway, Hoover was eating a lot of Bill's food, and Bill was getting pretty annoyed, naturally. He was pretty close to kicking his long-time friend out of the house.

Then one day, Bill comes home from the deli with these kosher pickles. I don't know what kind of pickles these were, but I would imagine that they were fairly bitter-tasting. Bill offered Hoover a sample (why not? The guy was going to eat it sooner or later), but after only one bite, Hoover spat out the mouthful of pickle and told Bill that it was disgusting. He couldn't finish the pickle.

This cheered Bill immensely. "A food that Hoover doesn't like!" he exclaimed to his friends. "I'm gonna LIVE off of these pickles! I'll fill the fridge with 'em!"

The next day, Bill comes home from work and goes to the fridge. To his astonishment, the pickles are gone. He asks Hoover if he knows what happened to them, and Hoover casually tells him, "Oh, those. I ate them this afternoon." Bill was flabbergasted. When he asked Hoover why he had eaten the pickles when he had said the day before that he hated them, Hoover replied: "I was hungry."

Bill and Hoover moved to separate apartments later that year.
posted by spoobnooble at 10:02 AM on April 21, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Theres a vegetable called 'bitter gourd' which is eaten cooked, with loads of onion and/or jaggery or sugar to counteract the bitterness. Your character could potentially eat it raw? It tastes awful, although it's supposed to help control diabetes, so some people do.
posted by darsh at 10:45 AM on April 21, 2008

In case anyone's checking in on this thread: I just wanted to thank everyone for their contributions. For more information on the novel and its status (currently it is in the submission process with some publishing houses), please log onto my website - excerpts from the novel are also posted there for those who want to check it out.
posted by spoobnooble at 7:25 PM on October 21, 2008