🇾🇪 The cattle breeds of Yemen

Cattle keep a quiet place in Yemen's food life. Beef is eaten less often than chicken, goat or lamb, and cheese and butter are uncommon at the table. Yet buttermilk is a daily drink in some villages, ghee seasons the savoury dishes, and the city of Taiz is known for its smoked cheese.

• Beef is eaten less often than chicken, goat or lamb in Yemen
• Buttermilk is drunk nearly every day in some villages
• Taiz lends its name to a smoked cheese
• Semn, a clarified butter, is the fat of choice for pastries
• Villagers simmer a thin wheat porridge with sour milk

Cattle in Yemen

Cattle stand at the edge of the Yemeni table rather than at its centre. The country's kitchens lean on chicken, goat and lamb, and beef appears less often than any of these. Dairy is modest too: cheese and butter are uncommon, and most cooking fat is vegetable oil or ghee, a cooking butter that ties Yemen to Indian methods absorbed through its maritime trade. Where cattle do show themselves, it is in buttermilk drunk daily in some villages, in semn, a clarified butter folded into pastries, and in the smoked cheese of Taiz. Yemeni cooking keeps its own way, set apart from other Arab kitchens, and cattle fit quietly within it.

Milk, butter and beef

Buttermilk is the everyday dairy of Yemen. In villages where it is easy to find, people drink it nearly every day. The traditional kind, hakeen, goes into shafut, a bread dish served with a hot sauce, and villagers also simmer a thin breakfast porridge of broken wheat with sour milk, called našūf ʻalā zūm. Milk flavours shahi haleeb, a milk tea. Ghee, butter gently heated to leave pure fat, seasons savoury dishes, while semn, the clarified form, is the fat of choice for pastries. Cheese and butter are otherwise uncommon, though Taiz is known for its smoked cheese. Beef turns up in a breakfast liver dish prized as a delicacy, yet chicken, goat and lamb fill most plates.