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Fermented milk from Mongolia, Inner Mongolia

Taragтараг

Tarag is the everyday soured milk of Mongolia, made from heat-treated cow, goat or yak milk, fermented naturally in a traditional container. Lactobacillus delbrueckii was the predominant species in 26 Mongolian samples, where mare's-milk airag was dominated by L. helveticus.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Tarag itself. Its own sources do not record how it is made, so the steps and scenes below are those of Airag, the closest documented fermented milk ferment, shown as a guide to the method, not as a record of Tarag.

Short entryFermented milk

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold method with no fixed amounts in the sources.
Cow, goat or yak milkOften a mixture of milks of different animals[oki2014][kochetkova2022]

Total time across the steps of Airag: 24 h – 2 days

Start
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What changes: Starting material: fresh raw mare milk

Step 1 of 4 · steps of Airag
Collect fresh mare milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts

Output: fresh raw mare milk.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

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

Tarag is the everyday soured milk of Mongolia, made from heat-treated cow, goat or yak milk, fermented naturally in a traditional container. Lactobacillus delbrueckii was the predominant species in 26 Mongolian samples, where mare's-milk airag was dominated by L. helveticus. Lactobacillus delbrueckii, the predominant lactic species in 26 Mongolian tarag samples and Lactobacillus helveticus and Streptococcus thermophilus do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Temperature23–25 °CReported[kochetkova2022]Leave the milk to sour

What makes this one different

Tarag is the cow, goat and yak milk counterpart of airag; its predominant lactic species in 26 samples was L. delbrueckii, while L. helveticus predominated in airag (Oki 2014).

Related ferments

Variants

  • Chegen (Altai)The Altai name; Lactobacillus predominated in both Altai samples (Kochetkova 2022).
  • Aaruul / khuruudDried curd made from soured milk; see aaruul.

History and sources

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

  1. [oki2014] Oki K., Dugersuren J., Demberel S., Watanabe K. 2014, Pyrosequencing analysis of the microbial diversity of airag, khoormog and tarag, traditional fermented dairy products of Mongolia, Bioscience of Microbiota, Food and Health 33(2):53–64 (abstract)paper
  2. [kochetkova2022] Kochetkova T.V. et al. 2022, Microbial communities of artisanal fermented milk products from Russia, Microorganisms 10(11):2140 (read via Europe PMC full text, PMC9697859)paper
  3. [wp-list] Wikipedia, List of fermented milk productswiki