Chhurpi is a cheese made in Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal. It is as hard as a piece of chalk. The cheese can be chewed as a snack while travelling, or ground into a powder for use as a condiment in soups.
Yak Cheese
Churtsi Cheese
Churtsi is a yak cheese made in Bhutan. It can be made from milk from a dri (female yak) or from a chauri (a cross between a cow and a yak.) To make chursti, a yoghurt which called “dhai” is first churned for butter. The remaining buttermilk is heated until it curdles. The curds are…
Rajya Metok Cheese
Rajya Metok is a mild-tasting Tibetan yak cheese. It has more of an animal smell to it than cheese made from cow’s milk does, though very little of the smell comes through in the taste.
Serkam / Dartsi Cheese
To make Serkam / Dartsi cheese, dri (female yak) or chauri milk is fermented into a yoghurt called “dhai”, then churned and used as butter. The buttermilk left from the butter-making process is then boiled and drained. The result is a fresh cheese, somewhat like cottage cheese in appearance. In Bhutan, the cheese is called…
Sewsew Cheese
Sewsew cheese is serkam (aka dartsi) cheese that has been allowed to ferment.
Yak Cheeses
Using Yak milk to make what Westerners call cheese is a recent historical development. Yak milk has a good fat content for cheese of about 7%.