Almost all buffalo ghee sold in India is made one of two ways. Both produce something you can legally call ghee. They are not the same product, and the price gap between them is large enough that it is worth understanding what you are actually paying for.
The two routes
Machine-made (cream-separated): milk goes into a centrifuge, which spins the cream out. The cream is churned into butter and the butter is cooked into ghee. Start to finish this can be done in a few hours, continuously, at scale.
Bilona (curd-churned): the whole milk is cultured and left overnight to set into curd. The curd is churned by hand until makhan separates. The makhan is then slow-cooked into ghee. Roughly a day and a half, in batches, with people doing the work.
What genuinely differs
- Aroma. This is the clearest difference and the one people notice first. Fermenting the milk before separating the fat leaves character in the makhan that cream butter does not have.
- Texture. Slow-rendered bilona ghee tends to set grainy as it cools. Ghee cooked fast at higher heat usually sets smooth.
- Milk used per litre. The bilona route uses more milk for the same litre of ghee. This is the single biggest reason for the price difference — it is a raw material cost, not a margin.
- Batch size. Cream separation runs continuously and blends across collections. Bilona is made in discrete batches, which is why a bilona producer can tell you which batch your jar came from.
What does not differ as much as people claim
It is worth being straight about this, because the category is full of overstatement.
Basic composition. Ghee is milk fat either way. Our NABL nutritional report puts our buffalo ghee at 99.74 g fat per 100 g. A well-made cream-separated ghee will not be dramatically different on that measure. If someone tells you bilona ghee has a fundamentally different fat profile, ask them for the report.
Purity. Bilona is a description of method, not a guarantee against adulteration. A dishonest bilona producer can still cut ghee with vanaspati. Method and purity are two separate questions, and only the second one is answered by a laboratory.
How to tell which one you bought
- Warm a spoonful. Bilona ghee has a pronounced, slightly fermented aroma; cream-separated ghee smells cleaner and flatter.
- Let a jar sit somewhere cool and look at how it sets. Grain is a good sign of slow rendering.
- Ask what the milk was set into. A producer who genuinely makes bilona ghee can describe the curd step without hesitating.
- Ask for a batch number and a lab report. This is the only one of the four that is not a matter of opinion.
The home tests have real limits, which we go through in how to identify pure buffalo ghee.
Is the premium justified?
Honestly, it depends on the use. For deep-frying or as a general cooking fat, you are paying for characteristics that get lost in the pan. For anything where the ghee is tasted — mithai, halwa, a spoon over dal or khichdi, parathas — the aroma and texture are the entire point, and that is what the extra milk and the extra day buy you.
What is never justified is paying a bilona price for cream-separated ghee, which is common enough that it is worth checking.
What we do at Chahal Agri Farms
We do not own a cream separator. Our buffalo ghee is set into curd overnight, hand-churned in a wooden bilona, and slow-cooked seven to eight hours in an earthen pot over dry cow-dung embers in Singhpur Sani, Sambhal.
Our April 2026 nutritional composition report from Equinox Labs — an NABL-accredited laboratory — is published in full, with the ULR number, so you can verify it independently rather than take our word for it. FSSAI purity testing for our ghee is scheduled for the next batch, and we will publish that the same way.
