Golden, rich, and delicious, “ghee is basically clarified butter,” explains April Poirier. “But it’s so much more than that.”

Poirier is the new owner of Full Moon Ghee, an Ashfield-based business she recently bought from founder Hannah Jacobson-Hardy. “When I tell people that,” she says, “most people don’t know what ghee is. So, I get a chance to explain that and why I’m so passionate about it.”

The history of ghee stretches back thousands of years to India and southeast Asia, where it was an important way of preserving milk. In fact, because the clarification process removes all water and milk solids, ghee (unlike butter) is shelf stable and can be stored unrefrigerated for months. Clarification also removes all but trace amounts of lactose and casein, meaning most dairy-sensitive people can eat it.

Ghee has a higher smoke point than butter, olive oil, and even coconut oil, meaning it can get very hot (482 degrees Fahrenheit) without burning or denaturing into toxic compounds. That makes it great for things like stir-frying, searing or roasting at high heat, infusing dishes with a nutty, buttery flavor.

“Ghee is also incredibly healing for the body,” Poirier says. “It helps you absorb fat-soluble nutrients, it can aid digestion, and it’s anti-inflammatory.”

Long before buying the business, Poirier was an enthusiastic Full Moon Ghee customer after a coworker introduced her to it. Buying ghee led her to Jacobson-Hardy’s other business, Sweet Birch Herbals, and soon she was enrolled in an herbalism apprenticeship course with Jacobson-Hardy, who is also an accomplished community herbalist.

“It was during one of our classes that she told us she didn’t want to juggle two businesses, and was closing Full Moon Ghee,” Poirier says. “Then you could almost see a thought pop into her head, and she said, “Unless someone wants to buy it.”

Poirier wasn’t sure at first that she could take it over. She already worked full-time for a tool manufacturing company in East Longmeadow, and still does. Yet the more she and Jacobson-Hardy talked, the more Poirier could imagine herself taking the torch from another woman who’d become her good friend.

“I loved the business, and I knew a lot of other people did too,” she says. “Hannah built such a good thing, and I wanted to keep it going.”

So far, Poirier has kept things going without a hitch. A new batch of ghee is still made every month at the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center in Greenfield. This facility, run by the Franklin County Community Development Corporation, is important to the local food economy in many ways. Farmers can hire them to preserve their seasonal produce, making salsas, pickles, sauces and other items that are then sent back to the farm to sell. They also help entrepreneurs develop ideas for new food products, do financial planning, and navigate food safety requirements. Plus, businesses can rent kitchen space or simply hire the center to make products according to their recipes. The latter, a process called co-packing, is what they do for Full Moon Ghee.

“The Processing Center and people who work there are truly part of the Full Moon Ghee family,” says Poirier. “I get them the ingredients, and on the full moon, they set aside a day in the kitchen and start cooking at 6 a.m. They do the production run, bottle it, label it, and store it for me. I pick up and do the shipping. I’m the owner, but mostly I’m in charge of the supply chain.”

The basic recipe for ghee is simple: melt butter, let it simmer for a few hours, and strain out milk solids that float to the top. As it cooks down, water evaporates, and more complex flavors develop. When the mixture transforms from cloudy to a deep, clear golden hue, it’s done.

Poirier sources butter from Marty’s Local, a distribution company that buys from many local farms. Each production run uses over 825 pounds of butter, or more than 3,300 typical quarter-pound sticks.

Flavors are added in two ways. “For our rosemary and garlic flavor,” Poirier says, “we add local garlic and rosemary to the ghee while it’s cooling. It infuses those flavor profiles, then we strain everything out with the milk solids. We do the same thing for the turmeric-spiced ghee, infusing it with turmeric, cardamom pods, ginger, ashwagandha, cinnamon, and some black pepper to activate the turmeric.”

Meanwhile, maple ghee is made by mixing in local maple cream (which is pure maple sugar, not a dairy product) after the cooking process. The same goes for chocolate ghee, where fair trade cacao and local honey are mixed in at the end.

Poirier loves using the sweet flavors as spreads on crackers, toast or pancakes, or even for dipping fruit. She also enjoys whisking them into her morning coffee to make “bulletproof coffee,” the added fat helping level out energy spikes and crashes from caffeine. Savory flavors, meanwhile, add depth to all sorts of winter dishes like roasted vegetables, soups and stews. Wherever butter works, ghee works too, often adding another dimension of flavor.

True to its name, all Full Moon Ghee is actually made on the full moon, and has been since Jacobson-Hardy started the business. Jacobson-Hardy herself first tried ghee while studying ayurvedic medicine, a form of traditional medicine with roots in India that valorizes ghee as a spiritual and healing food. Making it on the full moon, a time of healing and abundance, is supposed to heighten its beneficial properties.

“One of the lines towards the end of Hannah’s original recipe is for all the cooks in the kitchen to harvest the energy of the full moon and put its essence into the ghee,” says Poirier, beaming. “There’s so much joy and community that goes into making it. It just puts a smile on my face.”

Full Moon Ghee is available at many local stores and farm stands, including the Sweet Birch Herbals farm stand in Ashfield and others listed on the Full Moon Ghee website (fullmoonghee.com). Customers can also order ghee online for shipping or local pickup.

“This is the time of year for comfort foods, and ghee is very comforting,” says Poirier. “So really, ’tis the season for ghee.”

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To learn more about local farms and food near you, visit buylocalfood.org.