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Who the Hell NEEDS Amaretto Cheesecake Nonfat Yogurt?

by Anne Mendelson

Anne Mendelson, photo by Ken Schneider

The more fixated I got on yogurt, the madder I got about the bad jokes marketed under that name in the United States. I may be insulting almost all the yogurt-eaters of America, but that stuff is to real yogurt as apple Pop-Tarts are to apple pie made from scratch with great apples and a good lard crust. Real yogurt is what you get by inoculating real full-fat milk (from a goat, ewe, water buffalo, cow, camel, or other grass-eater) with a few kinds of "thermophilic" bacteria -- i.e., heat-preferring types, which promptly invade freshly drawn milk in the hot summers of the Yogurtistan regions -- and waiting until they've turned most of the lactose, or milk sugar, into lactic acid and created a delicate semi-solid gel out of the other components. Nothing, but nothing else, goes into it.

So why all the rubbish pretending to be yogurt in every supermarket from sea to shining sea? Because Westerners just don't get yogurt. Or didn't, until very recently. Most of them still don't.

First of all, people here eat pseudo-yogurt because they think yogurt is too sour unless someone fixes the problem with -- surprise! -- sugar. Lots of it, usually in cheap fruit preserves. I have news: yogurt made from scratch in Yogurtistan isn't awfully sour. The reason is that (a) it's usually eaten very fresh, before the lactic-acid transformation is far advanced; (b) the whey, or thin water-soluble part, is commonly drained off from the solider part, taking most of the lactic acid and remaining lactose with it. What's left has a lovely milky taste with just a slight, appealing hint of lactic acid.

Then there's the texture problem, which is two-pronged. American yogurt consumers want it to be about as firm as pudding. American yogurt manufacturers want to get maximum volume per batch. In Yogurtistan, draining off the whey (which gets saved for other purposes) automatically firms up the yogurt -- except for goats' milk yogurt, which never firms up because goats'  milk lacks a certain casein component that governs the transition from liquid to semi-solid. (Solution: people just drink goats' milk yogurt instead of trying to eat it with a spoon, and it's delicious as is. Or they combine it with ewes' milk, which sets up quite firm.) Most American makers skip the whey-draining step and instead throw in a bunch of thickeners and stabilizers that you'll see listed on the label if you're smart enough to read it.

Want to taste yogurt deserving of the name? Making it yourself isn't rocket science (see directions in my book and lots of other books, for instance any Turkish or Armenian cookbook with an ounce of loyalty to the writer's heritage). Or go shopping for some -- plain and unflavored, in case I didn't make that clear -- in a store that caters to Greek or Turkish clients, armed with the understanding that yogurt was never, never, NEVER meant to be tortured into some kind of low-fat health food. If it isn't creamy, it isn't worth feeding to the cat. Or cooking with.

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