Noun
Pronunciation: XXX
This is the fourth broad stage in the fermentation process (the first stage being milk fresh and warm from the animal), when the taste of milk shifts from nairobi (sweet) toward sour. 

Taste is how the Samburu monitor the state of the milk in the lmala. While kule naisukutan does not yet taste fully sour, it will immediately curdle and sour when boiled. Because it curdles in hot water, it is no longer good for tea. It is no longer pleasurable to drink, because it doesn’t have the sweetness of kule nairewa or the sourness of kule naoto — it is just in-between, neutral, like a slack tide — but it is good for porridge made with ugali. When kule naisukutan is poured into the boiling porridge, the curds become stringy. The porridge is now keisiicho (sour). 

If you have no alternative and must use kule naisukutan for tea, you add sugar to the milk and add this mixture to the boiled tea once it is off the fire, with a pinch of natron added — the salt stops it from becoming stringy. 

Kule naisukutan from cow milk behaves differently at this stage than sheep and camel milk, which can still be used for tea. 

Return to the Stages of Milk Fermentation.

This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel. 

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Published by William Rubel

I am an author who writes about traditional food and foodways. My book, The Magic of Fire (2002) is about hearth cooking. I have written an introductory history of bread, Bread, a global history (2011) and am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Other areas of interest include wild mushrooms, and specifically the treatment of Amanita muscaria in the historic record. I also write about Early Modern British Gardens, and for a more general audience, I write for Mother Earth News on bread, gardening, and more. I have an ongoing research project into the smoke-cured fermented milk of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I am a co-director of the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, Lengusaka. I am the founding editor (1972) of Stone Soup, the magazine of writing and art by young people.

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