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The Greeks never heard of Greek yogurt — 20 Comments

  1. Now I’m hungry for some browned ground lamb…. or even better lamb shanks.

    ” I even have a cute little cone-shaped gizmo for that very purpose, ”

    You would.

  2. We also get Turkish yoghurt, which is also strained. It is a bit cheaper than Greek, but it comes in pretty large containers. Both types come in low fat and 10% fat. I make tzatziki and I like to use the yoghurt for dips. Yoghurt topped wih brown sugar (which sort of melts into it) makes a great dip for strawberries.

  3. The soup recipe sounds tasty. Do you skim off most of the lamb fat after browning the meat?

    We make our own yogurt and kefir wtih whole milk sold in a nearby Amish market. We prefer the thicker consistency of strained yogurt and save the whey for cooking, and sometimes we use it as an aid in fermenting mixed vegetables. Currently we have about 1.5 gallons of a mixture of cabbage, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and golden beans fermenting in the basement. Whey speeds up the fermentation and makes the end result more nutritious.

  4. neo, what is the gizmo? it would be great if you could provide a link (your affiliate link) in the body of your post. i would like to see you be an unapologetic capitalist!

  5. “The Greeks never heard of Greek yogurt”

    Is that the sauce they put in those gyros pita bread sandwiches sold in Greek diners and sandwich chains?

  6. DNW,
    Yes, that’s tzatziki. It contains garlic lemon juice, chopped cucumbers, and sometimes mint. I do it also as a salad by increasing the percentage and size of the cuke chunks.
    BTW, gyros and Turkish dé¶ner supposedly came from travelling warriors who cooked hunks of meat on their swords over an open fire.

  7. I’ve found the best yoghurt – and that which most closely resembles the yoghurt that we used to buy at the local supermarket in Athens at the Asian or middle-eastern markets. It does make the very best tzatziki. The brand name is Abali. They’re based in Sothern California, but sell their products all over. The yoghurt is thick and rich and creamy, not thin and gelatiny, with that nasty chalky aftertaste that so many commercial yoghurts have. See if your local specialty grocery carries Abali – it’s superb.

  8. “A favorite recipe of mine adds the strained yogurt to a soup made of browned ground lamb . . . .”

    Oy gevalt.

  9. Yogurt in a beef curry with all the usual Indian spices – – delisioso! I love to make it so the steam is coming out of my ears and the forehead is perspiring (not a universal favorite, lol) and the yogurt ties it all together.

    Butter (liked onions) can find a place almost anywhere, and yogurt is a wonderful replacement in the right concoction.

    BTW: I bought a beautiful concical strainer for 50 cents at a yard sale a few years back simply because I loved the way it looked. I had never seen such a thing before, and have used it usually to strain fat.

    More btw: how does one strain yogurt? Is it home-made yogurt? What is the process?

  10. reticent and Tonawanda:

    I can’t find my cone-shaped gizmo online; that’s why I didn’t link to it. But I just added a link in the post on “gizmo” to an Amazon page listing a bunch of similar items.

  11. I don’t have a cool gizmo for straining yogurt, but my system works fine for me. I have a wire mesh colander that fits over a bowl, in the colander I can put three or four unbleached coffee filters. Spoon the yogurt into the filters and let it sit for a couple of hours, the whey collects in the bowl, and the strained yogurt can be scooped out of the coffee filters.

    The best results are with the best yogurt, just made from milk and cultures. Local farms and some Amish producers have whole milk or skim yogurt with no additives, sometimes raw milk too. And a great base is Trader Joe’s European Style whole milk yogurt. It’s already a wonderful, smooth consistency, and just straining out a bit more whey makes some very good Greek style yogurt.

    Too many producers of commercial yogurt have started adding gelatin or other thickeners, it’s useless to strain them. The sanctimonious jerks at Stonyfield Farms used to make a decent plain yogurt, just milk and cultures, but they changed the formula three years ago or so, and it’s awful now. But they still pretend to be “real” yogurt producers.

  12. You don’t need a special gizmo. I use a paper coffee filter placed in a strainer to make “Greek” yogurt. The rich & creamy yogurt can then be used to make either Greek tzatziki or Indian raita.

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