🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Tatars

The Tatars are a Turkic people of the Volga region and the Urals, settled farmers and herders since long ago. Peasant households kept cows, sheep and horses, and dairy products were part of everyday cooking.

The most typical product is katyk: soured milk made from boiled or baked milk, which is drunk, eaten with bread and used in dough. Strained katyk becomes syuzma, and syuzma in turn becomes kort (kurt) — dried salty balls. There is also eremchek, a curd cheese made from whey, and kaymak. Koumiss is known among the Tatars too, but in everyday life it is drunk less often than among their steppe neighbours.

Milk, sour cream and butter go into Tatar baking — from echpochmak (triangular meat pies) to chak-chak and sweet pies. The summer festival of Sabantuy comes with a spread that includes dairy dishes.