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Cheese from Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula

Iqt / Oggt (Arabia)Oggtt

Goat, sheep or camel milk is soured by its own lactic bacteria and churned, and the buttermilk left after the butter is removed becomes oggtt. In Saudi Arabia the buttermilk is boiled with stirring until thick, cooled, shaped by hand and dried in the sun; elsewhere it is drained in cloth instead of boiled. A boundary product, an acid-heat curd from fermented buttermilk dried hard for keeping.

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedMade under no standard protocol; no source gives amounts.
Goat, sheep or camel milkFermented spontaneously, usually in a goat-hide bag (korga'ah)[hassan2023][alabdulkarim2012]
Buttermilk left after churning the fermented milkChurned in a su'on (shakwah); it is the raw material of oggtt[hassan2023][alabdulkarim2012]
Starterspontaneous mixed fermentation in the goat-hide bag and churn, with their natural microflora
Start
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shapes, not to countLactic acid bacteriaMilk sugarLactic acid

What changes: The milk sours on its own and is churned, leaving sour buttermilk

Step 1 of 5
Sour and churn the milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
L. paracasei
Lacticaseibacillus casei
L. acidophilus
Enterococcus faecium

The butter is taken off; the buttermilk is the raw material for oggtt.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

wild lactic acid bacteria sour the milk before churning

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Goat, sheep or camel milk is soured by its own lactic bacteria and churned, and the buttermilk left after the butter is removed becomes oggtt. In Saudi Arabia the buttermilk is boiled with stirring until thick, cooled, shaped by hand and dried in the sun; elsewhere it is drained in cloth instead of boiled. A boundary product, an acid-heat curd from fermented buttermilk dried hard for keeping. Lacticaseibacillus paracasei and Lacticaseibacillus casei, the main isolates from Saudi oggtt; an earlier study also reported Lactobacillus acidophilus, Enterococcus faecium and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
AciditypH 4.3 → 4Measured[alabdulkarim2013]Store

What makes this one different

Made from buttermilk, not whole milk. In Saudi Arabia the buttermilk is boiled down before sun-drying, while the related jameed of Jordan is strained in cloth instead.

Composition
Moisture 7 %, ash 8 %, carbohydrate 35.5 %, fat 5 %, acidity 0.45 % before storage
Kinds
Brown oggtt is made in summer and creamy oggtt in winter

Related ferments

Safety

A dried, acid product (pH about 4) with low water, which is why it keeps. It is made under no standard protocol. Keeping well does not make it free of germs. Only cooked oggtt is boiled; salted oggtt gets no heat, and elsewhere the buttermilk is drained in cloth. The CDC says products made from raw milk can expose people to germs such as Brucella, Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria and Salmonella, and that children under 5, adults over 65, pregnant women and people with weak immunity are at higher risk.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Alabdulkarim and colleagues (2012) describe oggtt as a dried fermented milk product made from goat, camel or sheep milk by Bedouins in the Arabian Peninsula, widely used in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, northern Saudi Arabia and western Iraq. They say its traditional production is still at the level of village technology, with no standardized protocol. Hassan and colleagues (2023) likewise say it is produced traditionally in several Middle Eastern countries.

  1. [alabdulkarim2012] Alabdulkarim B., Arzoo S., Osman M.S.E. 2012, Effect of packaging materials on the physico-chemical, microbiological and sensory quality of cooked oggtt, World Applied Sciences Journal 17(8):951–957paper
  2. [hassan2023] Hassan A.A., Sakr S.S., Ali A.A., Mohamed Ahmed I.A., Elkashef H. 2023, Isolation, identification, and biochemical characterization of five Lacticaseibacillus strains from Oggtt - a traditional fermented and dried buttermilk, Food Science and Nutrition 11(2):1040–1050paper
  3. [alabdulkarim2013] Al-Abdulkarim B.O., Osman M.S., El-Nadeef M.A.I. 2013, Determination of chemical composition, and storage on dried fermented goat milk product (Oggtt), Journal of the Saudi Society of Agricultural Sciences 12(2):161–166 (abstract)paper
  4. [cdc-raw-milk] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Raw Milk (food safety page)gov