"Imagine you're walking in the mountains of Bulgaria, enjoying the lush greenery, the clear streams. And the reason you're up there? To make yogurt the old-fashioned way - by dropping live red wood ants into fresh milk. VERONICA SINOTTE: We added four whole ants, dropped them into the top, covered it with a cheesecloth, hiked up the mountain and buried it inside of the ant colony."
"BARBER: That's Veronica Sinotte, a microbial ecologist and lead author of the study. Sinotte was part of a small team that did this outdoor experiment and then hiked back up the mountain the next day to give it a taste. The research team said the yogurt was just barely clumpy at the bottom of the jar, slightly tangy and herby, and it tasted very different from what you buy in the supermarket."
Live red wood ants were placed into fresh milk and jars were buried in ant colonies overnight to induce fermentation. The outdoor ant-fermented yogurt became barely clumpy, slightly tangy, and herby, producing a flavor profile that differed from commercial products. Laboratory fermentations using crushed red wood ants produced a thicker, tangier yogurt. Ants carry lactic acid bacteria and other microbes that can drive fermentation, enabling complex, household-specific flavors. Commercial yogurt production typically uses two industrial bacterial starters, resulting in more uniform taste compared with traditional, microbially diverse ferments.
Read at www.npr.org
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