Kebir | Tulum Cheese Crumbly Aged | Tulum Peyniri | 17.6 oz (500 g)

Kebir's tulum in a 500 g pack, at the value end of the range.

Highlights

• Aged in a skin — the traditional method, and the reason for the texture
• Crumbly, not sliceable — it breaks rather than cuts
• Sharp and salty — considerably stronger than white cheese
• The breakfast cheese for people who find beyaz peynir mild

How to Enjoy

Crumble onto a breakfast plate with tomato, cucumber and olives. Also excellent melted into kuymak or scattered over hot pide straight from the oven, where the heat softens the sharpness.

What Is Tulum Cheese?

The name is the method. A tulum is a whole goatskin, cleaned and salted and turned into a bag. Milk is warmed to around 30°C, set with rennet, and the curd broken by hand with a wooden stick. The curd is then salted heavily — seven to nine percent — crumbled, and packed into the skin so tightly that no air pockets survive. The whole thing rests in a cool cave or cellar for three to six months.

What that does to the cheese. The skin breathes just enough to let moisture escape while the cheese matures, so tulum comes out dry, dense and crumbly rather than smooth. It breaks instead of slicing. The flavour is sharp, salty and tangy, with a buttery weight underneath and an earthy note that comes from what the animals grazed on.

The regional styles. Erzincan — also called Savak — is made from sheep's milk and is the sharpest and most pungent. Izmir comes from the Aegean, made from sheep's milk or a sheep-cow-goat blend; it carries more fat, sets harder and saltier, and shows small holes through the paste. Bergama is its own Aegean variant. Divle Obruk is aged in a cave rather than a cellar.

How it compares. Next to beyaz peynir or feta, tulum is drier, saltier and considerably more intense — use about half as much in a recipe as you would of feta. The low moisture also makes it a good keeper: wrapped and refrigerated it holds for weeks.

One honest note. EU and Turkish hygiene rules mean licensed producers can no longer use animal-skin bags, so most commercial tulum today ripens in tins (teneke) or food-grade barrels (bidon). Much of it is very good. But the goatskin version is the benchmark and the reason the cheese exists, and we describe the tradition rather than claiming every tub followed it.

Product Details

Also known as: tulum, tulum peyniri, izmir tulum, bergama tulum, skin-aged cheese