Ghee was until recently sold in American stores only in Indian and Middle Eastern groceries. It now appears in mainstream supermarkets alongside butter, and several unrelated forces pushed it there.
It solves a distribution problem butter does not
Ghee is butter with its water and milk solids removed. What remains is nearly pure fat, and without water it does not support microbial growth the way butter does.
That makes it shelf-stable at room temperature, so it can be stocked in ambient aisles rather than in refrigerated cases where space is expensive and heavily contested.
For a retailer that is the difference between a product which must earn refrigerated square footage and one that can sit quietly on a shelf indefinitely.
Its cooking behavior suits how Americans actually cook
Because the milk solids that scorch have already been removed, ghee tolerates higher pan temperatures than butter without darkening and turning acrid.
That makes it a straightforward substitute for butter in searing and roasting, which is how a jar gets used up by a household that bought it for one specific recipe.
It also carries the browned, nutty flavor those removed solids created during clarification, so it does not behave like a neutral cooking oil either.
Dietary framing changed the shelf it sits on
Interest in lower-lactose and grain-free eating patterns moved ghee into a category of fats discussed alongside coconut and olive oil rather than as an imported ingredient.
That reclassification matters commercially, because it changes which aisle a buyer stocks it in and therefore which shoppers ever encounter it.
Nothing about the product itself changed in the process. Ghee has been made the same way for centuries, and only the category it is filed under moved.
The Indian grocery version is a different product line
Indian groceries typically sell larger tins at a lower cost per ounce, often from long-established producers, and cooks who use ghee daily buy it there.
The mainstream jars are smaller and packaged for occasional use, which is a packaging and pricing decision rather than a statement about quality.
Cooks who care about flavor tend to judge on aroma and grain instead. A good ghee smells strongly nutty and sets slightly granular rather than staying uniformly smooth.
Availability has changed what home cooks attempt
Several categories of Indian sweet depend on ghee both as the cooking fat and as the carrier for aroma, and substituting butter changes the result noticeably.
With ghee on an ordinary supermarket shelf, those recipes stop requiring a special trip, and the special trip is usually the real barrier to trying something once.