Cheese Curds 奶渣
Cheese Curds is featured among the local specialties of Yunnan.
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Cheese Curds (奶渣) are the milk curds of the Tibetan kitchen in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (迪庆藏族自治州), Yunnan. In Diqing they go into butter-fried curds (酥油煎奶渣), a dish of Deqin (德钦) that local people often recommend to visitors.
How it is made
The curds and the butter (酥油) both come from milk: the milk is beaten until they separate. For butter-fried curds the two are brought back together in a clay pot and wild honey is added. In Nixi (尼西), a township of Shangri-La (香格里拉) where black clay pots are made, the dish is cooked in a black clay pot as clay-pot butter-fried curds (土锅酥油煎奶渣).
How it is eaten
Butter-fried curds are eaten with steamed buns and flatbreads (粑粑), and Yunnan Net describes the dish as something Deqin people eat from childhood and as a taste of home for them. In Shangri-La it is on the menu at Hongxin Snacks (红心小吃), a Deqin-style Tibetan eatery beside the Diqing Prefecture People's Hospital, and in Deqin county town at the Kawagebo Tibetan restaurant (卡瓦格博藏餐吧), named after the main peak of the Meili Snow Mountains (梅里雪山). The Deqin-born owner of Zhaxi Kada (扎西卡达), a Tibetan restaurant in Shangri-La, buys curds and butter from farm households each time he returns to his home area.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.