If you have been shopping for ghee online recently, you have probably noticed that some jars are priced at ₹400 a litre while others are priced at ₹1,500 or more. The difference almost always comes down to one thing: how the ghee was made.
The two methods
Most commercial ghee — including many brands that call themselves 'desi' — is made by separating cream from milk using a centrifuge, churning that cream into butter, and then cooking the butter into ghee. Fast, efficient, and cheap to produce.
Bilona ghee (also called Barosi ghee in North India) works completely differently:
- Fresh milk is boiled and cooled
- A curd culture is added and the milk is left overnight to set into dahi
- The curd is churned — traditionally by hand — until white butter (makkhan) separates
- The white butter is slow-cooked on a low flame until pure golden ghee separates
This process takes significantly more time and requires nearly twice the amount of milk to produce the same volume of ghee. That is why it costs more.
Does the method actually matter?
The Ayurvedic view — backed by generations of use — is that ghee made from curd has a fundamentally different composition from cream-separated ghee. Practically speaking, bilona ghee has a richer aroma, a slightly grainy texture when cool, and a deeper flavour that holds up in cooking.
How to identify real bilona ghee
- Strong characteristic aroma when warm
- Granulates or solidifies in cool temperatures — a sign of purity, not a defect
- Melts quickly when touched — pure ghee melts at body temperature
- Natural yellow tint from the fat of grass-fed animals
What we do at Chahal Agri Farms
Our ghee is made using the traditional Barosi method from local desi cows and buffalo in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh. Small batches. Hand-churned curd. Slow-cooked. Packed in glass jars the same day. No cream separators. No blending of batches. Every jar is made the way it has always been made in North Indian homes — because that is the only way we know.