05 Nov 2026 · Pavitram
Bilona, or the long way round
Two days of work for one jar. Here is exactly what happens, and why the shortcut changes the ghee.
Most ghee is made by spinning cream out of milk in a centrifuge and heating it. It is fast, it is cheap, and it works.
The bilona method does something different. It takes the whole milk, not just the cream, and cultures it into curd overnight in an earthen pot. The next morning that curd is churned by hand with a wooden bilona until butter rises to the surface. The butter is lifted off, washed, and slow-heated on a low flame until it turns grainy and golden.
It takes roughly twenty-five litres of milk to make one litre of ghee this way. It takes two days. It yields less and it costs more.
What you get for that is the grain, the aroma and the digestibility that come from culturing the milk first. You can taste the difference between ghee that was churned and ghee that was spun. That difference is the entire reason Pavitram exists.