I seriously love fat. Not all types, but I’ve told my son that if I don’t get cremated I want to be embalmed in Challenge Unsalted Butter. I’m not sure it would work but I’d finally get my fill of it.
However, I don’t have as much muscle mass as I used to and I don’t always get as much exercise as I would like so I try not to have too much fat every day. One tablespoon of good, real mayo has 110 calories, of which 110 are fat. I love it and eat it but I often use something lighter when I’m dressing a dense salad. My favorite is nonfat yogurt cheese.
Nonfat yogurt cheese?!??
Yogurt is fermented milk. You take some milk from a goat, cow, camel, sheep, yak, whatever you’re milking that day, introduce some bacteria into it, keep it warm so they can multiply and bingo! In a few hours you’ve got yogurt.
Now that may sound gross to those of you who think that food grows in plastic containers, but if you stick around this blog long enough, you’ll toughen up. I was skinning rabbits with my grandpa when I was five and I raised beef cattle for 10 years. I’m not queasy when it comes to looking at real food sources.
There’s evidence that yogurt has been around for a long time. We can track it back about 12,000 years, and it makes good sense. Think about it. You milk the musk ox, leave the milk in a bowl near the hearth, bacteria floating by decide it’s an inviting place to land and the result is thick, tangy and delicious and it lasts a while. Refrigerated, it lasts a long time and it stays alive. Yogurt is a live food! This is a good thing.
Most of what’s sold in the U.S. as yogurt really just starts with yogurt. Then a whole lot of stuff is added to it: sugar, gelatin, high fructose corn syrup, fruit jams, pectin, pretend flavors, etc. Some of these “yogurt food products” have been heated in their processing in a way that kills the good bacteria. This is a bad thing. It’s not even honest to call them yogurt, but honesty is not a hallmark of the corporate food industry and, once again, I digress . . .
You can buy yogurt with the same fat contents as milk. Whole milk or yogurt is 4% fat content. Then there’s 2%, 1%, and nonfat. Nonfat organic yogurt is a staple at my house.
It can be gussied up a number of sweet and savory ways and is nutritious and satisfying. Oh . . . and one cup equals 120 calories. That makes it 15 times less fattening than mayo.
About this yogurt cheese thing?
1. Start with good, real yogurt.
2. Get out your tools: a strainer, coffee filter, and tall bowl.
3. Nest the tools so:
4. Add a cup or two of yogurt.
5. Let it drain a few hours or overnight. The longer it drains the thicker it gets.
This has drained for about six hours.
When I turn it out on a plate you can see it’s more solid than regular yogurt.
I can even slice it.
6. Put it into a clean bowl.
7. Add some curry powder.
8. Mix well.
And voila! You have the dressing for your chicken salad.
I tried cheesecloth and drew the same conclusion: more mess than it was worth. I don’t think this was my original idea but I’ve been doing it this way for so long I don’t know who to acknowledge for it.
Cheryl, thanks for the idea of using a coffee filter. Many years ago I made this kind of cheese (courtesy of Weight Watchers instructions) but used five thicknesses of cheese cloth. What a mess. I will definitely try this again with a coffee filter. Your photos are GREAT!
I think that curry would definitely work for one of your jerky batches.
Using “raw” curry powder, as I do with the yogurt cheese, is not using it at its best. Curry powder, and all dried spices really, benefit from being briefly sauteed. My grandma did this with (Hungarian) paprika, and I realized early on in my chili making that throwing the spices onto the sauteing onions and garlic and/or meat before adding liquid really made them “bloom” with flavor.
Thanks! I’ve been experimenting with curry again, and getting better results. I plan to try it this evening, although I’m too impatient to let it drain overnight.
I wonder if curry would work in a marinade for one of my Jerky batches …