How Bilona Ghee Is Made: A Step-by-Step Look at the Traditional Process

Bilona ghee is one of the few traditional Indian foods where the process is the product. The same milk made into ghee by the modern cream method and the ancient bilona method produces two completely different foods — different texture, different aroma, different colour, different behaviour in the pan. Bilona ghee is made by setting fresh whole milk into curd overnight, hand-churning the curd into butter with a wooden churner in cold water, and slow-cooking that butter over a low flame until the water evaporates and the milk solids caramelise into golden ghee. The whole process takes the better part of a day for a single small batch — which is why traditional bilona ghee is rarely cheap, and almost never industrial. Here is what actually happens at each step, and why each one matters.

What is the bilona ghee making process?

Bilona is the name of the wooden churner traditionally used in Indian kitchens to convert curd into butter. The 'bilona method' refers to the entire traditional process built around that churner: milk to curd, curd to butter, butter to ghee. It is the process described in Ayurvedic texts thousands of years old, and it is still in active use across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and several other regions where dairy is part of daily life.

The cream method — the modern industrial alternative — skips the curd stage entirely. A centrifuge spins fresh milk and separates the cream, and the cream is then heated to make ghee. It is faster, cheaper, and scales to thousands of litres a day. Bilona scales to a few litres a day per worker. The trade-off is in the finished product.

Step 1: Sourcing the milk

Bilona ghee starts with whole, full-fat milk — usually from a single named herd. The breed matters because the fat character of the milk determines the fat character of the ghee. Most traditional bilona ghee in India is made from indigenous Gir, Sahiwal, or similar A2-only cow breeds, or from buffalo milk for a richer, whiter ghee.

Crucially, the milk should be fresh — ideally within hours of milking. The longer milk sits before being set into curd, the harder it is to get a clean, predictable culture in the next step.

Step 2: Boiling and cooling the milk

The milk is brought to a slow boil, then taken off the heat and allowed to cool to body temperature. Boiling kills off the variable wild flora and gives the next step — culturing — a clean starting point. The cooling step matters because the culture you add next is alive and would die in milk that is too hot.

Some traditional kitchens skip the boiling step and use raw milk directly. This works if the milk is genuinely fresh and the surrounding hygiene is tight, but in modern home or commercial kitchens, boiling first is the safer default.

Step 3: Setting the curd

A small spoonful of curd from the previous batch — the 'jamavan' — is stirred into the cooled milk. The milk is covered with a cloth and left to set overnight in a warm corner of the kitchen. Eight to twelve hours later, the milk has set into thick, firm curd.

The curd step is where the bilona method diverges most clearly from the cream method. Culturing the milk before extracting the fat lets the bacteria break down some of the milk proteins. When that curd-derived butter is then cooked into ghee in a later step, the milk solids develop a deep, nutty flavour that simply does not happen with cream-method ghee. This is the source of bilona ghee's signature aroma.

The traditional jamavan-from-previous-batch system also keeps a stable, continuous culture going in the kitchen. Each batch is essentially descended from the one before, the way sourdough bread starters work. This is one of the small details that distinguishes a traditional dairy from an industrial one.

Step 4: Hand-churning the curd into butter

Once the curd is fully set, cold water is added to it and the mixture is churned with a wooden churner — the bilona — in a large clay pot or steel vessel. The churner is rotated by hand using a rope wound around its shaft, the way villagers have done for thousands of years.

After about 20–40 minutes of churning, the butter starts to separate. It floats to the top as soft, pale, sweet-smelling lumps. The buttermilk left below — the chaas — is set aside; this is the same chaas that gets salted and drunk fresh in Indian households across the day.

Why hand-churning and not a mixer? In practice, a slow mechanical churn produces similar results. But the wooden bilona keeps the temperature low, separates butter cleanly without breaking the fat too aggressively, and is the reference process the rest of the method is calibrated to. Some modern bilona-method dairies use slow mechanical churners and call them bilona equivalents; whether that counts as 'true bilona' is a matter of opinion. The output is closer to traditional ghee than the cream method, either way.

Step 5: Washing and collecting the butter

The butter is gently washed in cold water two or three times to remove any traces of buttermilk. Buttermilk left in the butter will scorch when the butter is cooked into ghee, giving a bitter, burnt flavour. Clean butter is essential for a clean-tasting ghee.

After washing, the butter is gathered into a pot — usually a heavy-bottomed kadhai — ready for the slow cook that turns butter into ghee.

Step 6: Slow-cooking the butter into ghee

This is the step that takes attention. The butter is placed on a low flame and heated slowly. Three things happen in sequence:

• Water evaporation: butter is about 15–20 percent water. As the butter heats, the water boils off as visible steam. The butter melts into a clear yellow liquid with white milk solids suspended in it.
• Milk solids separation: as the water leaves, the milk solids sink to the bottom of the pot. They begin to brown gently, releasing the nutty aroma that defines bilona ghee.
• Caramelisation: the browning solids develop deeper colour and aroma. The cook watches carefully for the exact moment the solids are golden brown — past that point, they burn and the ghee turns bitter.

The whole cook takes 30–60 minutes for a small batch. The flame is kept low throughout. There is no shortcut to this — high heat scorches the solids before the water has fully left, producing a ghee that smells wrong.

The colour of the finished ghee depends on the breed of the milk and the exact moment the cook ended. Gir cow ghee is a deep golden yellow; buffalo ghee is whiter and more opaque. Both are correct, just different.

Step 7: Straining and bottling

While still hot, the ghee is strained through fine muslin to remove the browned milk solids. The solids — called bhuna khoya or ghee residue — are not waste. In traditional kitchens they are eaten with rotis or used to make sweets. The strained ghee is poured into glass jars while still warm and sealed once cool.

Glass bottles are the traditional choice and remain the right one. Glass does not leach into the ghee, does not absorb its flavour, and lets the buyer see the colour and texture of the product directly.

Why does bilona ghee take so long to make?

A simple time accounting for one small batch:

• Milk arrival and boiling: 30–45 minutes.
• Cooling and culturing setup: 15–20 minutes of active work, then 8–12 hours of waiting overnight.
• Hand-churning the next morning: 30–45 minutes.
• Washing the butter: 10–15 minutes.
• Slow-cooking the ghee: 30–60 minutes of attentive cooking.
• Straining, bottling, cleaning: 30 minutes.

Active work is roughly two to three hours; the total elapsed time is closer to a full day because of the overnight set. For a single small batch of bilona ghee, this is the time floor. An industrial cream-method line, by contrast, can produce thousands of litres in the same time window. The trade-off is exactly what you would expect: speed versus character.

How can you tell if a brand actually uses the bilona method?

Most ghee on Indian shelves is cream-method, even when it is labelled 'pure cow ghee' or 'desi ghee'. Bilona-method ghee is rarer and more expensive, and the brands that genuinely make it are usually proud to describe the process in detail. Watch for these signals:

• The brand explains the process step-by-step on their website or packaging, mentioning curd, hand-churning, and slow-cooking.
• Batch sizes are small. Bilona ghee is rarely sold in plastic tins of 5 kg; it is usually glass jars of 250 ml, 500 ml, or 1 litre.
• The price reflects the labour. Bilona ghee in India typically retails between ₹1,500 and ₹2,500 per litre depending on the breed and brand. Anything dramatically cheaper than that range, if it is honestly bilona, is unusual.
• The breed is named. A genuine traditional dairy will tell you whether the ghee is from Gir cow milk, Sahiwal milk, buffalo milk, or another specific source.

Is bilona ghee worth it?

If you cook with ghee daily, bilona ghee is where the per-spoon flavour return is strongest, which usually means you use less of it. If you use ghee occasionally, the difference is still noticeable on the palate but a smaller share of your monthly grocery bill. For households cooking for children, elders, or anyone with a sensitive digestion, the combination of A2 source milk and the traditional process is the version most aligned with the older Indian dietary tradition.

Milkaaru's bilona ghee from Surat

Milkaaru makes [A2 Cow Ghee](/a2-cow-ghee) from milk sourced exclusively from indigenous Gir cows at our farm near Surat, and [Buffalo Ghee](/buffalo-ghee) from milk sourced from our farm-raised buffaloes. Both follow the traditional bilona method described above — curd-set overnight, hand-churned, slow-cooked in small batches over a low flame, strained through muslin, and bottled in food-grade glass. Every batch is traceable to its source herd and cook date.

If you are buying bilona ghee for the first time, the simplest test is to taste a small spoon plain, warm a little on a roti, and notice how it behaves. The flavour and texture are not subtle. That is the point of doing it the old way.