Soft cheese you eat like yoghurt

We don’t hear much about Icelandic cuisine, but since the country’s delicacies include fermented shark, smoked puffin and boiled sheep’s head, that’s probably oK.

However, one Icelandic dietary mainstay has just arrived in British supermarkets, and you don’t have to worry about a Bushtucker Challenge approach to eating it.

In fact, as you will know if you’ve visited the island in the north Atlantic, Skyr tastes rather delicious.

Pronounced ‘skier’, it looks and tastes like a divinely silky yoghurt, although it is technically a soft cheese.

Beloved by the Icelanders, who eat it every day, all day, for breakfast, as a snack, as a drink or as a sauce, it dates back more than 1,110 years to when it was introduced to the nordic island by norwegian Vikings.

Made from skimmed cows’ milk (so it’s zero-fat), Skyr is strained so rigorously that much more milk is required to make it than for regular yoghurt, with the result that it’s very high in protein.

this means it is deliciously dense (‘You may need a stronger spoon,’ Skyr’s PR told me, only half-joking) with a creamy texture rather like proper Greek yoghurt. And its high protein content means that it keeps you feeling full for much longer.

this month a new range of Skyr has been launched in UK supermarkets in two sizes: the 450g big pots (RRP £1.69) and smaller 150g pots (RRP 85p).

the big pots come in three flavours: Simply natural, Honey, and Strawberry, while the snack- size pots come in five nordic flavours, including Apple & Lingonberry, nordic Sour Cherry and nordic Mixed Berry.

I tried the Strawberry, which was creamy and indulgent, and my eight-year-old son, who had it with cereal for breakfast, said he didn’t have his usual midmorning hunger pangs.