🧀 Curd snack

A curd snack (syrok) is a formed curd product: a single-serving bar made of curd from pasteurised milk with added cream, butter, fillers and food additives. In Ukraine's national standard DSTU 4503:2005 it belongs to the group of curd products, together with curd mass, pastes, creams and desserts. A glazed curd snack is a bar covered with glaze, chocolate mass or chocolate glaze.

The standard lists the permitted ingredients, including sugar, honey, fruit, berries, nuts, cocoa products and chocolate. Glaze is a confectionery semi-finished product made from butter, vegetable fats, sugar, cocoa products, dried milk products, fruit, berries or vegetables, flavourings, stabilisers and other ingredients. For glazed products the fat content is stated without the glaze. The standard does not apply to products made with vegetable proteins or milk-fat substitutes, so it is worth reading the ingredient list on the label.

Curd snack or curd mass? Both are curd products in Ukraine's standard DSTU 4503:2005, together with pastes, creams and desserts. Curd mass is a packaged or weighed product of curd with cream, butter and fillers, while a curd snack is a single-serving formed bar, and a glazed one is covered with glaze, chocolate mass or chocolate glaze. It is also a dairy product, made from curd from pasteurised milk, so it should not be mixed up with snacks of other kinds that only share the word “curd”.

Look for the chilled shelf: a curd snack is perishable and the standard keeps it at no more than 6 °C. In shops it sits with dairy desserts and curd products, in supermarkets and in stores with Eastern European food. Read the name, the ingredient list and the storage date. If the pack shows vegetable proteins or milk-fat substitutes, the standard does not cover it, so judge it by the label, not by the picture.

It is a perishable product. Under the standard it is stored at no more than 6 °C. Thermised glazed curd snacks keep up to 7 days at 2–6 °C and up to 14 days at 0–2 °C; they may also be stored frozen at −18 °C for up to 30 days.