Thread by @susarm

My multiday Central Asian dairy fermentation journey begins (rahmat to everyone who sent tips!) I’m making qurut which are hard balls of dried yogurt. So first I need to make yogurt, or qatiq (heat milk, add some Greek yogurt, and keep warm so fermentation can do its thing)

I'm using this recipe which says I need to wrap the jars in thick towels and even bedding. now they sit in the corner of my room for 8 hours, hopefully snug as... a jar of fermenting milk in a rug uzbekcooking.blogspot.com/2010/04/qatiq-…

I'd always called it kurt b/c that's the Russified name for it I heard in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But I'm told qurut is better b/c it means "dried" in Turkic languages (and kurt means caterpillar in Uzbek, so now I can't stop thinking about qurut shaped like kurt)

snug as a JUG of newly born qatiq in a rug: thick and creamy drinkable yogurt

it’s really delicious and not very sour at all

I want to drink all the qatiq because it’s so good! but it’s time to continue the qurut process. get in losers, we’re making suzma

we mix our qatiq with some salt and hang it to drain for the next 8 hours. this is the only sink in my apt b/c sometimes former tenements are quirky and there's no sink in the bathroom. clearly wasn't thinking "but what if I need to make drained yogurt" when I signed the lease

I could hang it in the shower but that feels unsanitary. If I get tired of this I could also be that new neighbor draining yogurt in the shared yard. anyway, suzma recipe: uzbekcooking.blogspot.com/search/label/A…

suzma came out thick and delicious! but not as plentiful as I imagined

so I made more qatiq and now we have suzma round two underway

ok! it's time to roll the suzma into balls for qurut. just watched these kids do it, looks pretty straightforward:

throwing on a playlist for inspiration open.spotify.com/album/1sMAN435…

ok got my suzma, time to stir in the flavoring (one salt-only batch, one red pepper, one dried basil)

(music change because qurut-making is Epic open.spotify.com/track/1KvbQ6yp…)

hmmmmmmmm

tried to roll the first ball... the kids in the video made this look easy

they bought their suzma from a bazaar in Uzbekistan which gives them an unfair advantage

this recipe says I was supposed to hang my suzma for 24 hours so it would be dried, which I did not do gastronom.ru/recipe/24401/k…

*drier

this recipe says I can whip it so it gets thicker, I'll try that 1000.menu/cooking/26545-…

ugh whipping made it more liquid... back to the draining stage we go

if this doesn't work I am going to Tashkent Supermarket in Brighton Beach and buying some sufficiently thick suzma! (and like ten thousand other things as usual)

OK at midnight yesterday (time diff) I Skyped with Mallika, an Uzbek food blogger who told me unfortunately I just need to wait a few more days for my suzma to get thicker. so here we are. (is that an idiom? like watching suzma dry?)

as you can see there isn’t even much suzma here, so this probably will be much ado about just a few pieces of qurut. but journey, destination, etc!

how will I know when the suzma is ready? Mallika said a spoon should stand up in it and then I can try rolling a test ball — if it’s doesn’t get sticky I’m good to go.

things have firmed up significantly in the last few days

the suzma pulled off the cloth way more cleanly than the first time I tried

test ball: success!

as you can see I didn’t end up with very much suzma! but I made some regular qurut (salt), a few with dried basil and a few with everything bagel seasoning because life is short

now we put them in a sunny place (in theory) and let them dry for a few days. or in the oven or with a hair dryer if I get desperate close to deadline

sooo my first batch of qurut got moldy while I was waiting for it to dry 🥴 guess you really need that Central Asian sun not damp NYC fall. but I have watched a YouTube video of someone making it somewhere in Europe who says you can “cheat nature” by baking it at very low temp

these guys went into a non-preheated oven set to about 100 degrees F for 45 min, though the lowest mark on my oven is 200 so who really knows. As the video said they are now sort of rubbery and springy doesn’t hopefully this is right. they didn’t melt, which would be not right

now I’m blow drying yogurt at my desk, how’s your Monday going?

cat seems unhappy about the dryer, but he’s gonna get rewarded with qurut later and let’s see if it blows his little mind

blow dried the qurut for 15 min and it’s still springy, apparently you do this routine three days in a row and then it will be sort of hard but not as hard as if you were making it in the dry steppe. stay tuned I guess

this was the soundtrack I put on for good juju while it baked: open.spotify.com/album/2We0jbyj…

in the end, I made eight balls (I ate one)

(I kept some suzma to eat separately)