Ah, so yogurt REALLY is a Bulgarian thing! In France, we've always had a slew of "Bulgarian taste" yogurts, which are usually slightly acidic in taste (and which I enjoy a lot) and I've always wondered if it was just a marketing thing or grounded in reality.
Yogurt's homeland is Bulgaria, and if it doesn't have Streptococcus Thermophilus and Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, it's not yogurt, but just a form of fermented milk. It has to be tangy and, in fact, in Bulgarian, its name is literally "sour milk". After joining the EU, our traditional manufacturers started to westernize yogurt, and now we have all kinds of fruit-sweetened forms, and the country's taste is shifting via the young, which is unfortunate. Now you can find all kinds of low-fat alternatives, and in the past, there was just one single variety, sold in a glass jar, and it was pure medicine: http://e-vestnik.bg/imgs/home_page/Kiselo_Mlyak-sots.jpg
It used to be a healthful breakfast given its balanced nutritional profile per one cup: 150 calories, 8 g of fat (5 g of which saturated), 5 g of carbs, and 13 g of protein while supplying 1/3rd of your daily calcium need.
People look at me weird sometimes when I tell them we usually drink our yogurt.
In Serbia we have different types of yogurt some more thick (the westernized with flavor), yet some runny/less thick. But sour milk (kiselo mleko for us) is always of same texture and we eat it with a spoon. So, my question is - do Bulgarians drink their yogurt or do they eat it with a spoon?
We eat yogurt ("кисело мляко") only with a spoon - it's not liquid. We drink ayran ("айрян"), which is yogurt diluted with water yogurt with added salt. There's also kefir ("кефир"), which is liquid, but it is not Bulgarian at all.
Gotcha. Ayran is something I will definitely try if I visit!
Yes, I'm familiar with Kefir and it's sort of the same as our version of yogurt, but Kefir has a bit stronger/more "recognizable" taste!
I've found that pretty much all Turkish places (be it a kebap shop or a restaurant, snack shop, etc.) usually sells Ayran, it's what I usually get with kebap / iskender / adana, it helps with some of the spicy sauces.
Isn't Yogurt a common thingy in various countries. At least, in India it is known to have been used for a long time (specifically the clarified butter derived from the yugurt[1]).
Ghee is clarified butter and has nothing to do with yogurt. Now, when the native to Bulgaria bacteria has been spread around the globe, yogurt is available worldwide, but not until recently.
But what I meant is that ghee is not made with yogurt and not solely from fermented milk - and ghee doesn't have to be cultured either (most brands available in US stores are not). Again, my point was, that for fermented milk to be called "yogurt," it needs to have a particular Lactobacillus profile, which is not traditionally available in India. Nowadays, maybe you use the imported starter cultures just like Japan, USA, and EU does.
Please do :-)! The butter by itself is quite tasty; more tangy than store-bought butter and delicious when whipped with powdered sugar then spread on bread.
> it needs to have a particular Lactobacillus profile, which is not traditionally available in India
Sorry, do you have a source for this? I was unable to find anything. I don't think it would've been too difficult for yogurt cultures to diffuse gradually from Bulgaria to India in ancient times. There were plenty of traders and conquering armies going back and forth. Yogurt has been in India for thousands of years.
With regard to yogurt cultures used in India, I only found the following: "In India, a combination of "Lactobacillus bulgaricus" and "Streptococcus thermophilus" is used for commercial production." [1]
I've had ghee before, and I like it - especially the one I buy at the farmers market from grass-fed Jersey cows.
Every country has some regulation on what should be marketed as "butter," "cheese," "yogurt" so that consumers are not deceived. For example, in Bulgaria, recently there's been "butter" on the market with 70% hydrogenated palm oil! If there's no precise definition of what "yogurt" is, kefir, butter milk, and lassi can be sold as yogurt then - they are fermented dairy products as well
In Bulgaria, for example, there's strict standard, which even limits the types of containers that can be used to sell yogurt (as some may alter the taste or leach chemicals).
I know that there's EU regulation on yogurt as well, but I'm not able to find it, unfortunately.
>In France, we've always had a slew of "Bulgarian taste" yogurts, which are usually slightly acidic in taste
In the US, I think this is being marketed as "Greek yogurt." (I don't like yogurt so no first hand experience, but in the last few years I've noticed many brands being advertised as "Greek", and as being more tangy and possibly more healthy/"natural")
“Greek yogurt” is the same thing as “yogurt cheese”—it's yogurt strained to remove/reduce whey. Well, except that US rules allow thickeners to be used instead of straining, so many US versions are thickened, rather than strained.
Not sure about that, we have both, Greek and Bulgarian, they're noticeably different in texture and taste, though it might be different on the American market, I don't know.
