The bilona method: how ghee is made from curd
Bilona is the traditional Indian way of making ghee. Whole milk is cultured overnight into curd; the curd is churned with a wooden bilona until butter separates from buttermilk; the butter is simmered until its water is gone and the milk solids have browned and settled. It takes 25 to 30 litres of milk to make one litre of ghee.
What the word means
A bilona is the wooden churn itself: a long-handled beater that is turned in a pot of curd, by hand or with a rope, until the butter gathers. The method is named after the tool. So bilona ghee means ghee made by churning curd, as distinct from ghee made by separating cream from milk in a centrifuge. The spelling bilauna is also used.
The process, step by step
- Milk the cows after the calves have fed Whole milk is collected from Gir cows each morning, after the calves have drunk first. It is used whole: nothing is skimmed off before the next step.
- Boil the milk, then cool it The milk is brought gently to the boil in a heavy vessel and left to cool until it is just warm, the temperature at which a curd culture will take.
- Culture it into curd overnight A little of the previous day's curd is stirred in as a starter and the milk is left undisturbed overnight to set into dahi (curd). This is the stage that cream-separated ghee skips entirely.
- Churn the curd into butter At dawn the whole curd is churned with a bilona, the wooden churn the method is named after, until soft white butter (makkhan) gathers and separates from the buttermilk (chaas).
- Simmer the butter into ghee The butter is heated low and slow for several hours. The water boils off, the foam subsides, and the milk solids toast and sink to the bottom of the pan. The clear golden fat that remains is ghee.
- Strain and rest The hot ghee is strained off the browned solids and left to cool slowly. Slow cooling is when the characteristic grain, the danedar texture, forms.
- Fill the jars The cooled ghee is poured into glass jars, sealed and labelled. At Organic Farmz each jar is also code-stamped so the buyer can tell which morning's milk it came from.
From milking to jar the process takes about two days. The curd alone takes a night. Organic Farmz follows these steps in Delhi and starts a batch only after an order is placed; the timeline of one jar and a day at the dairy describe it in more detail.
The ratio: 25 to 30 litres of milk per litre of ghee
25 to 30 litres of whole cow milk make one litre of bilona ghee.
Milk is mostly water. Its fat is a small fraction of its weight, and not all of that fat ends up in the jar: some stays in the buttermilk after churning, some is held in the water the butter still carries, and some is lost with the browned solids at the bottom of the pan. The ratio is the main reason a litre of bilona ghee cannot be cheap: the milk alone costs more than a litre of factory ghee sells for. What 25 litres of milk looks like next to one litre of ghee puts the number in a picture, and this cost breakdown follows it through to a price.
Bilona versus the cream (centrifuge) method
Almost all ghee sold in shops is made the second way. Both methods end with butterfat being heated until the water is gone; they differ in everything before that.
| Stage | Bilona (curd-churned) | Cream-separated |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Whole milk, boiled and cultured into curd overnight | Fresh milk run through a centrifuge; the cream is taken, the skim milk is sold separately |
| Fermentation | Yes: the curd is cultured for a night, so the butter is cultured butter | Usually none: cream goes straight to heat (some makers culture the cream) |
| Churning | By hand, with a wooden bilona, in small batches | Mechanical, or skipped: cream can be clarified directly |
| By-product | Cultured buttermilk (chaas), used as a drink or in cooking | Skim milk |
| Time | About two days | A few hours |
| Milk needed per litre | 25 to 30 litres | Less: a centrifuge recovers fat more completely than churning curd does |
| Flavour and texture | Nutty with a faintly sour, cultured note; usually grainy (danedar) when cooled slowly | Milder, sweeter, more uniform; can also be grainy if cooled slowly |
| Cost | Higher: more milk, more labour, more time | Lower: built for scale |
What the table does not show is a proven health difference. Both products are almost entirely milk fat and their nutrition is very similar. The differences that are easy to demonstrate are in flavour, aroma, texture and the by-product. Traditional sources, including Ayurvedic texts, prefer the curd-churned ghee and describe it as lighter to digest; that is a traditional position, not a finding from controlled studies. The two routes are compared in more depth in Curd-churned or cream-separated, Why the curd stage cannot be skipped and Cultured vs uncultured ghee.
What bilona does not mean
- It is not a certification. Indian food standards define ghee by what it is made from and its composition. They do not define or certify the words bilona, hand-churned or Vedic; any seller may print them. What hand-churned actually means on a label and Bilona vs Vedic ghee go into this.
- It is not proved by texture. Grain forms when any ghee cools slowly, so a grainy jar is consistent with bilona but does not prove it. Does grainy ghee mean it is pure?
- It is not a breed or a protein. Bilona describes the method. A2 describes a milk protein and Gir a breed of cow; ghee can be bilona without being A2, and A2 without being bilona. See the glossary and A2 vs A1.
How Organic Farmz makes it
Organic Farmz makes A2 Gir cow ghee by the bilona method in Delhi (WZ-110, Nimri Village, Shastri Nagar, Delhi 110052). Every jar is made after the order is placed, not taken from stock, and the buyer is sent photographs of their own batch on WhatsApp. The ghee is sold by the litre at a rate that falls with quantity: Rs 1,400 a litre for 1 to 2 litres, Rs 1,300 a litre for 3 to 4 litres and Rs 1,200 a litre for 5 litres or more, delivered across India. Questions go to WhatsApp +91 79827 20757 or support@organicfarmz.com. Read more in Why we only churn after you order, Knowing when the ghee is ready by ear and the story of the buttermilk left behind.
Questions people ask
What does the word bilona mean?
Bilona is the Hindi and Gujarati word for the wooden churn used to beat curd into butter. The ghee-making method takes its name from the tool. Bilona ghee therefore means ghee made by churning curd, not by separating cream.
How much milk does it take to make one litre of bilona ghee?
Between 25 and 30 litres of whole cow milk make one litre of bilona ghee. Milk is mostly water, its fat is a small fraction of its weight, and some of that fat stays behind in the buttermilk and the browned solids.
How long does the bilona process take?
About two days from milking to jar. The milk is boiled and cultured on the first day, the curd sets overnight, and the churning, simmering and cooling fill the second day.
What is the difference between bilona ghee and ordinary ghee?
Bilona ghee is churned from cultured curd; most commercial ghee is made from cream that a centrifuge has spun out of milk, with no curd stage. The curd stage adds a day, a lot of hand work and a slightly sour, fermented note to the flavour; the cream method is faster and cheaper at scale.
Is bilona ghee the same as cultured ghee?
Yes in substance. Cultured ghee is any ghee made from fermented (cultured) butter, and bilona ghee is cultured by definition because the milk is set into curd before churning. Cultured ghee can also be made from cultured cream, which is not strictly bilona.
Is bilona ghee the same as Vedic ghee?
Vedic ghee is a marketing term, not a defined one. It is usually used for ghee made by the same curd-churned process, sometimes with the added claim of a wood fire or a specific churning direction. There is no standard that defines it.
Why does bilona ghee cost more?
Three reasons: it needs 25 to 30 litres of milk per litre, the curd is churned by hand in small batches rather than by machine, and the whole process takes about two days. At Organic Farmz the ghee is sold by the litre at a rate that falls with quantity: Rs 1,400 a litre for 1 to 2 litres, Rs 1,300 a litre for 3 to 4 litres and Rs 1,200 a litre for 5 litres or more, delivered across India.
Is bilona ghee healthier than cream-separated ghee?
That is not established. Both are almost entirely milk fat and their nutrition is very similar. The clear differences are in flavour, aroma and texture. Claims that curd-churned ghee is easier to digest come from tradition and have not been shown in controlled studies.
Does the word bilona on a label guarantee anything?
No. Indian food standards define what ghee is and what it must contain, but they do not define or certify the words bilona, hand-churned or Vedic. Any seller can print them, so ask how the ghee was made rather than relying on the label.