Kishk substitute

Best substitute

Tarhana (Turkish or Greek fermented soup powder)

Use the same amount by volume as the kishk you are replacing

Best for kishk soup

Different taste

The best ready-made swap is Turkish or Greek tarhana, used 1:1 - it is the same idea, a fermented wheat-and-yogurt powder, though most tarhana contains tomato and pepper so your soup will come out reddish and slightly sweet instead of pale and purely sour. If you have no tarhana, make a stand-in: per 1 cup of kishk, grind 1/2 cup of fine bulgur to a coarse powder in a spice grinder and whisk it with 1 cup of thick yogurt, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Kishk does three jobs simultaneously - it is the thickener, the sour acid, and the entire savoury backbone of the dish - so a substitute has to cover all three or the soup tastes like wet porridge.

Other kishk substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Ground fine bulgur plus thick yogurt and lemon
Different taste
Per 1 cup kishk: ½ cup fine (#1) bulgur ground to powder, 1 cup strained yogurt, 1 tsp lemon juice, ½ tsp salt
This rebuilds kishk from its actual components, which is why it works better than any single-ingredient swap.
What changes
The ground bulgur supplies the starch and the wheaty body, the yogurt supplies the dairy tang and creaminess, the lemon sharpens it, and the salt does what the salt in real kishk does. What changes: the one thing you cannot fake is the fermentation. Real kishk has days of souring behind it, which gives it a deep, almost cheesy sourness and a savoury edge. This version tastes clean, young and yogurt-forward - correct in texture, thinner in flavour. Whisking in a tablespoon of feta brine or a little crumbled aged cheese closes a surprising amount of the gap.
Best for
kishk soup, kishk manakish if you thicken it further, when there is no Middle Eastern shop nearby
Grind the bulgur properly - unground bulgur stays as separate grains and gives you a grainy soup rather than a smooth thickened one. Add the yogurt off the heat or stabilise it with a teaspoon of cornstarch, because it will curdle if it boils. Fine bulgur is the right grade; coarse bulgur will not break down to powder easily.
3Sourdough discard plus ground bulgur
Close match
Per 1 cup kishk: ½ cup ground fine bulgur plus ½ cup sourdough starter discard, plus salt to taste
An unexpectedly good option if you keep a starter, because it is the only easily available ingredient that brings real fermented sourness rather than the simple lactic tang of fresh yogurt.
What changes
The discard contributes both wheat starch and the acidic, slightly yeasty depth that makes kishk taste aged. What changes: it is more bready and less dairy-like than kishk, so the soup tastes rustic and sour rather than creamy and sour. Whisking in half a cup of yogurt as well gives you both halves of kishk's character and is the best home approximation on this page.
Best for
kishk soup, cooks who already bake sourdough, getting genuine fermented sourness without a Middle Eastern grocer
Use discard that smells pleasantly sour, not sharply acetic or alcoholic - an over-ripe starter will make the soup taste harsh. Cook it out properly for at least ten minutes so the raw flour flavour disappears.
4Persian kashk
Different texture
Use about half the volume of kishk called for, and reduce other liquid, then thicken separately with ground bulgur if needed
Kashk is the same family of ingredient - dried or liquid fermented whey and yogurt - and it delivers the aged, funky sourness that is hardest to replicate.
What changes
What changes: kashk has no grain in it, so it sours and enriches but does not thicken, which means you still need a starch. It is also considerably saltier and more pungent than kishk, so use less than you think and taste as you go. The liquid kashk sold in jars for ash reshteh and kashk-e bademjan is easier to find than the dried kind and works well stirred in at the end.
Best for
sourness and savoury depth in kishk soup, pairing with ground bulgur for a full substitute, kishk-style dips
Add it near the end of cooking rather than at the start, since long boiling dulls its flavour and can make it grainy. Because it is salty, hold back the recipe salt entirely until you have tasted the finished pot.
5Toasted semolina or Cream of Wheat with yogurt
Taste and texture differ
Per 1 cup kishk: ⅓ cup semolina toasted dry until it smells nutty, plus 1 cup yogurt and salt
The purely mechanical option, for when you need the soup to be a soup and have nothing else.
What changes
Toasting the semolina first is what makes this tolerable - it develops a nutty, slightly roasted flavour that stands in for the wheatiness of kishk instead of tasting like raw flour paste. What changes: no fermentation, no bulgur character, and a smoother, more uniform texture than kishk gives. The result is a decent thickened yogurt soup, and it is honest to say it is not kishk soup. Fried garlic, plenty of dried mint and a good glug of olive oil on top will do more for it than any further tinkering with the base.
Best for
thickening a kishk-style soup with pantry staples, when bulgur is unavailable
Toast it in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring, until it turns the colour of light sand and smells like popcorn. Add it to the pot as a slurry with cold water, never dry into hot liquid, or it will seize into lumps.
6Nothing - accept there is no real substitute and change the dish
Taste and texture differ
Worth saying plainly: kishk is a fermented, sun-dried food with weeks of process behind it and there is no ingredient on a Western supermarket shelf that tastes like it.
What changes
If the recipe is kishk soup or kishk manakish, kishk is not a component of the dish, it is the dish. If none of the options above are available to you, the more satisfying choice is often to cook something else - a lentil and bulgur soup with plenty of fried onion, or a labneh and za'atar manakish - rather than a diluted version of a dish whose entire point is a flavour you cannot yet reproduce. Then buy kishk online, because it keeps for a year in the cupboard.
Best for
deciding whether to substitute at all, recipes where kishk is the only real flavour source
Kishk is inexpensive, extremely light to post, and sold by most online Middle Eastern grocers, so this is a one-time problem rather than a permanent one.

What is Kishk?

Kishk is Kishk, also spelled kishik or keshek, is a pale, fine, sour powder made by fermenting cracked bulgur wheat with yogurt or laban for several days, drying it in the sun, then rubbing and grinding it to a flour, used mainly for kishk soup and kishk manakish.

Cooking tips

Slake kishk in cold water or oil before it meets anything hot. Dropped dry into simmering broth it seizes instantly into hard lumps that never dissolve. Mix it to a loose paste with cold water first, or stir it into the fried onions and oil off the heat, then add the hot liquid gradually.
Build the soup on fried garlic and onion in olive oil or ghee before the kishk goes in. This is not optional seasoning - kishk on its own is sour and one-dimensional, and the sweetness of slowly fried onion plus a lot of garlic is what turns it into shorbat kishk. Many cooks fry the kishk itself in the oil for a minute before adding liquid.
Expect it to thicken far more than you think, and to keep thickening. Kishk soup that looks right in the pot will be almost solid the next day, so make it looser than you want and keep extra broth or water on hand to let it back down when you reheat.
For kishk manakish the mixture needs to be a thick spreadable paste, not a batter - kishk, olive oil, finely chopped onion and sometimes a little tomato, stiff enough to stay on the dough. If you are substituting with tarhana or a yogurt-and-bulgur mix, thicken it well past soup consistency or it will run off the bread and burn on the tray.
Store kishk in the freezer if you have it. It is a dried wheat and dairy product, so it goes stale and eventually rancid in a warm cupboard, and the flavour dulls noticeably within a few months at room temperature.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the kishk out?

Not if the dish is named after it. In kishk soup and kishk manakish, kishk provides the sourness, the savoury depth and the thickening all at once, so leaving it out gives you fried onions in water. If kishk is a minor addition to something larger - stirred into a lentil soup for tang, for instance - then yes, you can skip it and add a squeeze of lemon and a spoonful of yogurt at the end instead.

Is kishk the same as jameed?

They are cousins with the same logic - preserving dairy by fermenting, salting and sun-drying it - but they are not interchangeable. Jameed is pure dried yogurt with no grain in it, so it rehydrates into a pourable sauce and thickens very little. Kishk has cracked bulgur fermented into it, so it is a flour that both sours and thickens. If you use jameed in place of kishk you will get the tang but a watery soup, so you would need to add ground bulgur or semolina to compensate.

Is kishk gluten free?

No. Kishk is made from bulgur, which is cracked wheat, so it contains gluten and there is no traditional gluten-free version. For a gluten-free kishk-style soup, the nearest approach is thick yogurt soured with lemon, thickened with a starch such as cornstarch or rice flour, and built on plenty of fried garlic, onion and dried mint. It will not taste fermented, but it will taste good.

What does kishk taste like?

Sharply sour and savoury, with a distinct aged, almost cheesy quality behind the tang, and a soft wheaty background from the bulgur. It smells stronger than it tastes. Dry, it is a fine pale powder that looks like a slightly gritty flour. The closest reference point for most people is a very tangy, thickened yogurt soup with a fermented depth similar to sourdough.

Can I make kishk at home instead of buying it?

Yes, and traditionally it is a communal late-summer job: coarse bulgur is soaked in laban over roughly a week, with more yogurt worked in each day, then the mixture is spread out to dry fully in the sun and rubbed through a sieve. It needs warm, dry, breezy weather and about ten days, so it is not a same-day project. Follow a tested recipe rather than improvising the salt and drying times, and make sure it dries completely - any residual moisture in stored kishk will spoil it.

Related substitutes

More grains & starches substitutes

Kishk substitute

Other kishk substitutes

2Ground fine bulgur plus thick yogurt and lemon

3Sourdough discard plus ground bulgur

4Persian kashk

5Toasted semolina or Cream of Wheat with yogurt

6Nothing - accept there is no real substitute and change the dish