How many calories in ghee?
~40 kcal per tsp
Ghee is roughly 40 calories a teaspoon and 120 a tablespoon — pure fat, with no meaningful protein or carbohydrate. It is the single most commonly underlogged item in Indian home cooking.
By serving
Serving by serving.
Ranges rather than single numbers. Home cooking has no standard serving, and the same dish made in two kitchens genuinely differs by this much — a single figure would be false precision.
| Serving | Calories |
|---|---|
| 1 teaspoon | 40–45 |
| 1 tablespoon | 120–135 |
| Spread on 1 roti | 20–45 |
| Per 100 g | 880–900 |
Per one teaspoon: 0 g protein · 0 g carbs · 4.5–5 g fat
Why the range
What moves this number.
If you want a better estimate than the table gives, these are the things worth paying attention to. Everything else is noise by comparison.
- How generously it is applied. A brushed roti takes a fraction of a teaspoon; a properly ghee-laden one takes a full one.
- How often. This is the real issue. Ghee on four rotis a day, every day, is 100–180 calories daily that almost never gets logged.
- In cooking versus on top. Ghee used for a tadka is spread across the whole dish; ghee added at the table is concentrated in your portion alone.
- It is not more or less fattening than oil. Ghee and refined oil are within a few calories of each other per spoon. The choice between them is about flavour and cooking temperature, not calories.
Logging it
You do not need this table every day.
Looking a number up works once. Doing it for every item of every meal is the reason most people stop tracking within a fortnight.
BetterCal has no database to search. Say or type the meal the way you would describe it to a person — "ghee and dal" — and it is logged with calories and macros in one go. If your version differs from the estimate, correct it once and it remembers, so over a few weeks the numbers converge on your kitchen rather than an average of everyone else's.
Frequently asked questions
How many calories in one teaspoon of ghee?
About 40–45. A tablespoon is roughly 120–135. Ghee is essentially pure fat, so the figure is very consistent — unlike most home-cooking estimates.
Is ghee good for weight loss?
It is neither good nor bad in itself, but it is extremely calorie-dense, so it is easy to eat a few hundred calories of it without noticing. Measuring it is the single highest-value thing you can do in an Indian kitchen.
Is ghee healthier than oil?
For calorie purposes they are equivalent — both are around 40 calories a teaspoon. Ghee is higher in saturated fat and has a higher smoke point; neither difference matters much at normal intakes.
Why is this a range and not one number?
Because the honest answer is a range. Serving sizes are not standardised and cooking fat varies enormously between kitchens. A single confident figure would be more convenient and less true. See how accurate calorie estimates really are.
Do I need to weigh food to track it properly?
No. Weighing improves precision that you mostly do not need — being consistently within 10% is enough to lose or gain weight predictably. The easiest way to track calories covers the method.
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