🥣 Katyk

Katyk (qatiq) is a thick fermented milk product; pressed katyk is the base from which kurt, a dried fermented milk product, is made. In a study from Kazakhstan it was fermented with a thermophilic starter of Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, the same pair of cultures that the Codex Alimentarius names for yogurt.

In that study, skimmed milk was pasteurized at 72–75 °C, cooled to 40–42 °C, inoculated with the starter and held for 6–8 hours at 38–42 °C until a firm curd with a pH of 4.6–4.7 formed. The curd was then separated from the free whey by pressing for 10–12 hours, which gives a thick mass; this is what is later salted, shaped into balls and dried to make kurt.

Pressed katyk made from skimmed milk contained 18.8% protein, 3.9% fat, 5.1% carbohydrates and about 69.5% water. Its protein contains all the essential amino acids, the most abundant being proline, leucine with isoleucine, and lysine.

Katyk or yogurt? Both can start from the same two cultures, Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, which the Codex Alimentarius names for yogurt. The difference lies in what happens afterwards: in the Kazakh study the curd was pressed for 10–12 hours into a thick mass, and that pressed katyk is what kurt, a salted, dried product, is made from. Eaten as it is, the pressed mass held 18.8% protein, so it is far denser than a spoonable yogurt.

Look for the name “katyk” or “qatiq” (Central Asian spelling) and the description “fermented milk product”; the words “live cultures” or a count of bacteria may appear, since unheated fermented milks need at least 10⁷ live bacteria per gram. It is uncommon on ordinary shelves: try shops for Central Asian and Eastern European foods or the chilled cabinet of a large supermarket. Keep it cold, close to 4 °C.

Why it matters to you. Katyk is a live fermented milk product, so keep it cold: in the study, the pressed mass was stored at 4 ± 2 °C. Under the Codex Alimentarius, fermented milks that were not heat-treated after fermentation need to contain at least 10⁷ live starter bacteria per gram until the end of the shelf life.