What is Birds Spit Soup?

Very fine stringy dough wrapped around pistachios or cashews and lightly fried to boldness.

Ingredients

Pistachios or cashews, ghee, wheat flour, sugar, corn starch.

Characteristics

Birds Spit Soup is a very light dessert. It is so light, one can eat a few dozen pieces before noticing. It is the lightest among all Middle Eastern sweets and pastries.
Meaning and Pronunciation
In Arabic, Birds Spit Soup is called Osh El Bulbul and pronounced [ush-el-bul-bul],. Its circular shape and filamentary structure resemble closely that of a Birds Spit Soup.

What is Birds Spit Soup?

How is Birds Spit Soup Made?

To make Birds Spit Soup, first the stringy Knafeh dough and the sugar syrup are prepared, then the dough is formed into circular shapes resembling Birds Spit Soups, filled with nuts, and baked.

Preparation of Strings of Knafeh Dough

Knafeh dough consists solely of flour and water. To prepare it, flour and water are mixed for about four hours to form a watery mixture. Then the mixture is poured into a special container that contains small holes in its base and placed on top of a hot surface. As the watery dough mix passes through the holes, it forms filaments of dough. The container is moved along the hot surface as the dough mixture drains through the container to form long strings of dough. The strings of dough are then let to dry, and voila, you got the stringy Knafeh dough.

Preparation of Birds Spit Soup

For each Birds Spit Soup piece, a few strings of the freshly made Knafeh dough are formed into a circular shape resembling a Birds Spit Soup and filled with pistachios or Cashews.
The Birds Spit Soup shaped pieces are the left to dry for about 12 hours.

Baking

Ghee is added on top of the Birds Spit Soup pieces which are then baked for one hour on medium temperature. After baking, the remaining ghee is drained and sugar syrup is added.

Serving Suggestions

Birds Spit Soup is offered as a dessert. It is however so light and so small in size, make sure you offer at least a dozen pieces for each person.

Popularity

It is most popular in Syria. It is also popular in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan.

Classification

It is one of the assorted Baklava pastries that are made with knafeh dough.
Assorted baklava pastries are made of two forms of dough: Paper thin sheets of phyllo dough and thin strings of dough called knafeh dough. While many types require the knafeh strings of dough to be shredded, Birds Spit Soup takes advantage of the stringy shape of the dough to give it a unique texture.

The secret to knowing the fake Birds Spit Soup

Birds Spit Soup is a kind of food, pharmaceutical extremely valuable with many different effects on human health, so the demand for oats on the market today. , combined with high economic value, the nest has been faked a lot, sold everywhere. This article, I will tell you way to identify the most simple and accurate artificial nest you can apply when buying oats to avoid buying counterfeit goods.

1. Adding salt, sugar or other agents to increase weight

Through our survey, we found that the majority of Birds Spit Soup available for sale are glazed with either salt, sugar or other additives to increase weight, often up to 40%. Imagine you pay $100 for 100g of nests but in reality you only get 60% of real nest while the remaining 40% is sugar. That means you pay $40 for 40g sugar!!! Just when you thought you got a good deal, you are actually paying more for the same amount of authentic Birds Spit Soup. Not only that, the unknown additives used in the making of fake Birds Spit Soup could be carcinogens. Moreover, these unknown mixture of Birds Spit Soup are highly susceptible to pathogenic bacteria and molds that could seriously damage your health.

*** How to tell:

+ Pure authentic Birds Spit Soup: if you were to lick it, it would be tasteless, similar to licking a rice noddle. When you pick it up, it is light, brittle, and inflexible (even when exposed to air for a long time). It is prone to fracture even to light touches.
+ Birds Spit Soup glazed with salt, sugar or other additives:
– Break off a small piece and chew it, you will find it sweet (or salty). Sometime you can even taste the sweetness or saltiness by just licking the Birds Spit Soup, especially when large amount s of additives were used. Another way to detect fake Birds Spit Soup is to taste the water that was used to soak the Birds Spit Soup in. If the water become sweet or salty then the Birds Spit Soup were tampered with.
– The glazed Birds Spit Soup are usually more flexible because the additives make the strands soft and bendy. These fake nests are highly susceptible to pathogenic bacteria and molds. They will often darken with prolonged exposure to air. This change in color is indicative of the Birds Spit Soup was glazed with some type of sweetener. In addition, the fake nests become iridescent under shining lights.

2. Red Nests

There are usually 3 categories of fake red Birds Spit Soup:
– Normal food coloring -> easily detectable upon soaking in water as the dye will leak out of the Birds Spit Soup
– Industrial dyes -> hard to detect as the dyes won’t leak when soaked in water
– Chemical reactions turning Birds Spit Soup from white to red. This is when Birds Spit Soups are put in the manure/compost pit, which contains NH3. Under the proper conditions, a chemical reaction will occur changing the Birds Spit Soup from white to red.
When done properly (UNCOMMON), even though the Birds Spit Soup changed from red to white, the quality remains unchanged meaning these red nests have no additional nutritional values unlike the authentic red Birds Spit Soup made naturally by the swiftlets in sea caves. However, the price difference is significant. Authentic red Birds Spit Soup are priced 5-10x more than the white couterparts. Moreover, when incubated in the manure or compost pit, Birds Spit Soup can become contaminated with nitrite, which increases the risk of cancer upon prolonged consumption.
Nowadays, the market is flooded with these fake red Birds Spit Soup, often very cheap to attract uninformed customers. We found that some stores even give 20g free samples of red Birds Spit Soup with purchase of 100g white ones. How is that possible when red Birds Spit Soup worth 10x the price of the white ones? Be a smart consumer! Think twice before spending your hard-earned money buying toxins that could be detrimental to your health.

*** How to tell:

Authentic red Birds Spit Soup carries the essence of the sea. Any one who has ever been to the ocean knows that the ocean air smells different. It has that distinct smell of the water, salt, sun and sand. Authentic red Birds Spit Soup has that same smell because it was exposed to the same elements. It has to be soak for a long time (2-3 hours) to become soft and the recommended cooking time is 2-3 hours compared to 30-45 minutes for the house Birds Spit Soup.

3. Fresh Birds Spit Soup

Fresh Birds Spit Soup are ones that have been soaked in water to clean out the debris but have NOT been through the drying stages. Hence, fresh Birds Spit Soup contain a large amount of water, ie weight of Birds Spit Soup and plus weight of water. It’s impossible to assess whether you get a good deal as it’s very difficult to know how much water fresh Birds Spit Soup contains.
There are rumors that fresh Birds Spit Soup is better than dried ones. That is NOT true. When it comes to nutritional value, fresh and dried Birds Spit Soup are the same. Smaller produces do not have adequate equipment for drying Birds Spit Soup so they spread such rumors for their benefits. And as we mentioned earlier, the customer usually lose when buying fresh Birds Spit Soup as it is nearly impossible to determine the amount of water inside. One way to check is to dry fresh Birds Spit Soup with fans then you can determine how much you actually pay for Birds Spit Soup vs water. Be an informed consumer and don’t pay for water!