W.Hether is a commercial, kefir, sauer cabbage, kimchi or leaven, today's gourmets do not have enough fermented treats to tast at their taste receptors. But for adventurous menu it can become wild. How about a spoonful of an ant Yogurt?
This is not connected with the domestic ants. Instead, the unfortunate insects fall into a jar with warm milk, which is tucked into an ant embrace and remains for fermentation within night. The tradition of enzymes coming from Turkey and Bulgaria is currently resurrected in the name of science.
Dr. Veronika Sinotta and her colleagues from the University of Copenhagen became interested in this practice after they were addressed by chefs of research and developers in a restaurant with two target stars in the city of Alchemik in the hope of learning more about how this fermentation process worked.
“Ants are somewhat frequently used ingredient in high -class gastronomy in Copenhagen. Their ingredient cooks with whom you like to play, ”said Dr. Leoni Yang, senior researcher of the Novo Nordisk Foundation for Biosading in Lingby, who is under the control of the project.
” [former] The head of R&D Alchemist was very interested in scientific innovation in food products and is very excited by the acidity of ants. He wanted to explore this. “
But was it anticoic acid ants that turned milk into yogurt, or something else?
To investigate, the researchers visited the village in the south of Bulgaria, where the co -author of the study, Sevgi Sirakov, had family ties. Although the inhabitants of the village no longer made yogurt ant, some remembered the methods of older generations and helped restore the impromptu recipe: the milk of the cow, warm the milk until it “bites” your finger, add four red wooden ants, cover the chizlot and bury the pot in the anthill of the marshmallow during the night. The mound provides heat and, possibly, additional microbes that pass through the cheese.
The next day, Sinotta chose the results: “It was at this early stage of good yogurt – the enzyme discarded acidity, and there were some tiny aromas and herbaceous notes.”
Returning to the laboratory, the team conducted further experiments in controlled conditions, using the ant DenmarkThe field according to Sinotta, this yogurt was a little different – it was thicker, with a large number of lemonic notes – perhaps from the differences in the amount and composition of the culture of the beginning of the ant.
Their conclusions are published in the journal ISCAINGAssume that fermentation is a joint process between the ant and the microbe: anticoic acid of insects reduces the pH of milk, which allows their microbes with acid, while ants or bacterial enzymes break milk proteins to produce yogurt. It is noteworthy that only living ants had the right microbial community.
As a passionate Fermentista, I found a desire to try to make my own yogurt ant. Sinotta and his colleagues advise this: some ants can carry a parasite, the type of liver, which is harmful to people. In addition, the number of ants of the red tree decreases in the broad parts of Europe, which makes a large -scale collection of insects unstable.
I spent a good hour, worried about ethics, but curiosity won – I helped, discovering a supplier who finances the reinthroduction of the Ant Red tree. With the relative experience in the area of the ant, in order to take care of my remaining colony, I also hoped to compensate for the loss of four ants that I planned to sacrifice.
Adapting the methodology from Iscience Paper Sinotte, I sterilized the pestle and solution, heated 30 ml of milk to 42C, added four chopped ants, and then strained the mixture through the microbiological sieve to remove the parasites or fragments of the ant before incubating it in my ordinary manufacturer of yogurt during the night.
The result was gelatin yogurt, with an amazingly creamy taste. I did not find any notes of lemon, just soft bitterness. In fact, it was quite pleasant.
In addition to curiosity, such experiments can lead to practical applications. Researchers believe that microbes from ants can serve as a tool for creating new products, such as plant -based yogurts, or introduce new aromas for existing ones, such as leaven.
Professor Martin Blazer, an expert on human microbiomas at the University of Rutgers in the United States, said he was excited by research. “One of the consequences of the worldwide popularity of yogurt is that there are several industrial strains [of bacteria] This dominates yogurt, ”he said.
“I suppose that the yogurt of ants is more or less equivalent to industrialized yogurt. But for the insightful, this type of approach can expand our repertoire of products, which gives us interesting and unique tastes. ”
Ants are not the only unusual ingredient, historically used to create yogurt. In Turkey and other countries, people have traditionally used plant material, such as Paynins, chamomile and Linden flowers, or nettle roots to hit yogurt enzyme. The study of these approaches can give further textures or aromas – with an additional advantage of leaving ants unharmed. Crap yogurt for breakfast, is anyone?
