Handmade Milk Curd Really Does Taste Better – And It’s Not Just Hype!
Anyone who has visited the grasslands of Inner Mongolia will be familiar with steaming pots of salted milk tea and traditional Mongolian dairy foods. Last summer, during my fieldwork in Sangendalai Town, Zhenglan Banner, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, local herding households would invariably treat me to these delicacies.
Initially, I found it hard to adjust to the unique fermented scent of the dairy foods. Yet after a month had passed, I could not manage a single meal without milk tea. These dairy treats became an essential part of my daily routine, and more significantly, they proved to be a vital key to understanding the transformations taking place in the local pastoral communities.
Since 2018, the Inner Mongolia government has pursued a ‘Dairy Industry Revitalisation’ policy, with Xilin Gol League actively championing the dairy sector and offering substantial support to traditional makers. Despite this development, producers continue to face considerable hurdles; many small-scale artisans see little benefit and are quietly exiting the trade.
What drives this? Herders attribute it to the rapid turnover of production machinery, the erosion of time-honoured techniques, and increasingly standardised food regulations, but see it chiefly as a symptom of the broader decline of traditional grassland pastoralism.
I. Dairy Food Production as Local Knowledge
Much like any seasoned artisan, herders who excel at this craft may struggle to articulate the precise duration required for fermentation, the exact temperature needed to separate the whey, or the specific timing and pressure for stirring the curds. Yet, through the quiet repetition of daily labour, they have cultivated a deeply practical, embodied knowledge—a reality well illustrated by 28-year-old Xinjile.
Xinge’er grew up absorbing the craft of dairy production around him, and after university he followed in his father’s footsteps to run the family dairy business.
He maintains that there is no fixed recipe for making dairy products; success hinges instead on the maker’s instinct and the quality of the fresh milk. Leftover milk from today’s batch is left to ferment naturally, then blended with fresh milk the following day to continue the process.
The crucial stage in transforming curd into milk tofu is “developing elasticity”: the dairy mixture is heated and stirred until it reaches a gluten-like consistency—soft, pliable, and stretchy.
On one occasion, while heating a batch of fresh curds, Xinge’er found the mixture refused to stretch no matter what he did; the separated acidic whey simply reabsorbed into the curds under vigorous stirring. He surmised the milk was too high in fat, so he removed half of the semi-solid mixture and replaced it with a bucket of frozen, partially de-wheyed fresh curds. He stirred this new blend with greater care, frequently checking the texture by hand and kneading gently until the milk tofu finally set.
Subu, another dairy producer, ensures consistency by adding fresh milk to the curds: “If I notice it won’t stretch, or if the texture feels off when I touch it, I’ll just add a splash of fresh milk to bind it together.”
For most makers, as long as the milk is up to standard, the process rarely goes wrong. They trust their experience and craftsmanship, making subtle adjustments along the way to guarantee a consistently reliable product.
This adaptable approach yields a wide range of fermented flavours: Subu’s milk tofu develops a golden crust and a rich, mellow taste, while Xinge’er’s is notably chewy, melting and stretching beautifully when heated.
II. Standardised Production: Can Quantity and Quality Coexist?
Simultaneously, authorities have been vigorously pushing for the standardisation of small workshops. Converted facilities must comprise six fundamental zones, including changing and sanitising rooms, milk clarification areas, and fermentation workshops. Electric processing machinery is mandatory, and all traditional tools are swapped out for kitchenware made of food-grade plastic and stainless steel.
Gerel, who is in her forties and has been running a dairy products business in Sangendalai for over twenty years, has witnessed the local industry’s transformation from its early days to its modern form. For Gerel, switching to automated machinery has undoubtedly relieved the burden of strenuous manual labour, significantly expanding production capacity.
Prior to 2020, Gerel used a back room as her workshop, handcrafting traditional dairy cheese with wood-fired stoves, large iron pots, wooden stirring sticks, and wooden moulds. An hour of manual stirring would yield less than five kilograms of cheese.
In 2020, spurred by government incentives, Gerel established a dairy-processing workshop and introduced automated machinery. Raw milk is now conveyed to the production area through chilled mixing tanks and a network of pipelines. Temperature in the fermentation room is regulated by air conditioning to ensure a stable fermentation process, enabling the production of at least 15 kilograms of finished milk curd in just one hour.
Despite the higher output, Gerel feels that machine-produced dairy falls slightly short: “We regulate the temperature with air conditioning inside sealed rooms, but the resulting cream just doesn’t have that rich, deep aroma.”
Unlike the climate-controlled factory approach, traditional fermentation relies on exposing the milk to air. The fresh milk is left untreated, allowing it to interact naturally with ambient microbes. Over a natural fermentation period of 12 to 72 hours, the milk develops into yoghurt. The separated fat and whey are then further processed into traditional dairy foods. In Gerel’s view, the rich aroma of these dairy products is closely tied to whether the fermenting milk comes into contact with natural microbial flora.
“The techniques for making dairy products with machines differ from the traditional skills practised at home, so the flavour is bound to be different. As mechanisation advances further, traditional dairy culture will gradually be lost,” Gerel worries.
The equipment used in standardised workshops also brings about subtle changes to the flavour of the dairy products.
In traditional dairy-making, wooden tools are selected and handcrafted by the herders themselves. Moulds for milk curd, particularly those engraved with patterns and Mongolian script, are especially exquisite. Wood is not merely aesthetically pleasing; it can also absorb lactose, facilitating a ‘secondary fermentation’ of the dairy products. In many regions, wooden barrels remain the preferred choice for fermenting yoghurt and churning butter.
Herders have voiced considerable reservations about this. Natural fermentation is inherently a product of an open environment; over-sterilised utensils sever the organic connection to the ingredients, gradually reducing dairy foods to assembly-line commodities and stripping away their distinctive flavour and cultural significance.
III. Upgraded and modernised, but what next?
Although local authorities have introduced a range of incentive policies, in practice only producers who have already accumulated sufficient capital qualify for the preferential treatment under the dairy revitalisation programme, and thus have the means to invest in mechanised production and standardised upgrades.
At present, Sangendamai is home to three standardised workshops, while the remaining dozen or so dairy food outlets still operate as family-run craft workshops. The majority of these small family operations simply cannot afford the costs involved in scaling up production.
Subu, who runs a dairy product shop in Lan Banner, was blunt: with no money to buy machinery or hire labour, his production capacity can only stay as it is.
By the end of 2022, Master Lu, who had been running his dairy shop for seven years, had even shuttered his business. “The cost of these dairy goods keeps rising, yet trade is only getting tougher,” he said. “Too many competitors have switched to mechanised production. They use milk from large-scale ranches, every batch comes with a quality inspection certificate, they operate at a much higher volume, and have far wider distribution networks. You simply cannot compete with that.”
The few shopkeepers who have managed to keep pace with the push towards standardised production all share a common background: they previously worked in other trades and have managed to save up some capital.
Gerile spent 600,000 yuan upgrading his family-run craft workshop to meet standardised production requirements. That sum covers only the hardware costs: purchasing machinery and retrofitting the facility. An electric heating and stirring boiler costs around 20,000 yuan each, while a heated centrifuge and an electric milk-skin baking rack each run about 10,000 yuan. Fitting out the 600-square-metre workshop cost a further 500,000 yuan. For the majority of herders teetering on the edge of poverty, these are virtually prohibitive sums.
Mechanised production not only demands a substantial fixed investment but also challenges local herders’ conception of what constitutes a quality dairy product.
To herders, the quality of the raw milk is the fundamental determinant of a dairy product’s character. “Only foods made with local milk have this authentic flavour. Local cattle produce milk with a higher fat content; the milk curds made from it develop a fine layer of yellow fat on the outside, and that is what truly tastes right.”
Their view is well-founded. Local Mongolian yellow cattle graze on open pasture for most of the year, yielding a longer lactation period, superior milk quality, and higher milk solids. Consequently, the dairy products made from this milk are notably richer in fat.
Milk flavour naturally shifts according to cattle breed, feed composition, and seasonal changes, yet herders maintain a deep-seated wariness of intensive farming: “Cows elsewhere are fed different forage. Their milk carries a strong grassy odour, which gives the processed dairy foods a strange taste.”
In their view, the shift in raw milk used by standardised workshops has a profoundly disruptive impact on product quality.
IV. From Fresh Milk to Dairy Foods: A Look Back
That possibility had indeed existed. In fact, beginning in 2001, Zhenglan Banner—where Sanggendalai Town is located—implemented an ecological relocation policy alongside a plan to establish dairy cow villages. The scheme was designed to guide relocated herders to abandon their local Mongolian yellow cattle and transition entire villages to Holstein dairy farming.
Although imported Holstein dairy cows cost significantly more than beef cattle and were demanding to care for, the government initially rolled out substantial support for herders: offering loan subsidies, building fodder supply bases, bringing in major dairy companies, and establishing milk collection stations in every village. The local dairy farming sector flourished for a while, and herders’ livelihoods became closely tied to it.
Take Taben’ao du village in Sangendalai as an example: around 2007, households kept an average of ten to twenty dairy cows each. Milk collection prices held steady at 1–1.2 yuan per *jin* (500g). Back then, dairy farming reportedly netted each household several tens of yuan a day, comparable to the daily wage from casual labour.
However, following the 2008 melamine-tainted milk powder scandal, oversight of raw milk quality tightened sharply and the dairy market contracted rapidly. Major dairy firms, themselves heavily impacted, moved directly into the raw milk supply chain. They established corporate-owned farms and absorbed independent herding families to secure pricing control. As collection stations closed their doors, milk lost its established markets, leaving herders without a vital source of income.
Meanwhile, the cascading effects of the 1980s dual contracting system for grassland and livestock on herders’ livelihoods began to surface.
As pastures and livestock were contracted to individual households, grassland communities transitioned from collective nomadic herding to settled grazing, with families managing enclosed plots and bearing their own profits and losses. Since the 1990s, despite ecological initiatives such as converting arable land to grassland, enforcing grazing bans and seasonal rest periods, and maintaining grass-livestock balance, problems like pasture degradation have remained stark.
As most pastures in Sangendalai were placed under grazing bans and seasonal rest periods, available land per capita fell to just over 200 *mu* (approximately 13 hectares). This proved insufficient for free-range grazing, prompting a gradual shift towards confined, fenced systems. Herding households now spend an average of more than six months a year keeping livestock in enclosures, which has drastically increased labour demands and feed costs.
For herders who move to urban areas for work, densely packed living quarters are ill-suited for keeping livestock, let alone providing the conditions needed to make dairy products at home.
Meanwhile, herders remaining in pastoral areas and dairy villages are growing older. They typically milk their cattle daily for household consumption alone, rarely selling surplus milk to dairy processing workshops. Increasingly, they are stepping away from the back-breaking labour of traditional dairy making, creating a growing reliance on commercially produced dairy foods. There is an undeniable irony in this.
V. Epilogue
The introduction of official production standards has undoubtedly improved hygiene conditions in dairy food manufacturing. Yet, increasingly standardised regulations clash with the traditional knowledge embedded in artisanal dairy making. Producers are now forced to adapt their time-honoured methods to comply with these mandates—so how can they possibly recreate the authentic, richly flavoured dairy products cherished by herders?
As this continues, it will grow ever harder to shift a dynamic in which commercial dairy products crowd out traditional ones, corporate giants marginalise independent producers, and the well-capitalised displace those with fewer resources. Amid volatile raw milk markets and the financial orchestration of major dairy firms, the industry’s heralded ‘revitalisation’ surges forward, while small-scale producers struggle to share in the rewards.
In response, Geriye has used Douyin videos to issue a call to action, urging regulatory authorities to develop policies and measures tailored to traditional dairy workshops.
I believe that alongside scaling up and standardisation, respecting indigenous local knowledge and learning to work collaboratively—yet selectively—with natural environments and native microorganisms may offer a viable path for traditional dairy foods to navigate their current predicament.
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Disclosure
All personal names used in this article are pseudonyms.
All photographs are taken by the author unless otherwise stated.
Editor: Ze’en