Shit! Better make those chick peas now! Get the pinto beans out of the slow cooker! Run across the street to get more chick peas! Never mind that I just cooked a metric fuckton of chick peas for other dishes! Must! Use! Yogurt!
I reacted this way because plain vegan yogurt can be ridiculously hard to find. I went to three different stores in search of this little cup, and the store where I finally found it is not on my regular shopping route. If I miss my window with this yogurt, it will be a while before I get out there again.
Then I thought, wait a minute. What if this yogurt sucks? What if it disappoints you, like so many other vegan yogurts? Before you go nuts, taste it. So I stuck my finger in and tasted it. It tastes . . . okay, but nothing like the plain yogurt I remember from pregan days. It has no tartness at all. It's more like vanilla pudding than anything. So I stuck it back in the refrigerator and went about my pinto beany business. I'll be throwing the yogurt in a smoothie, either later today or for breakfast tomorrow morning.
I'd had my suspicions about this yogurt. A 6 ounce container has 13g of sugar, which just sounds insane. But it was the only plain yogurt I could find in that size, and the recipe only calls for a quarter cup. At the health food store across the street I can get Wildwood soy yogurt, which sounds more promising -- only 3g of sugar per serving, and no actual "sugar" in the ingredients -- but it only comes in quart containers, and every time I've seen it the date has been a week or less away. And what if it sucks? I've been burned by soy yogurt in the past -- there was that one batch of onion dip I don't even want to think about (I learned my lesson and use silken tofu for that sort of thing now).
Plain yogurt is the one dairy food for which I have not found an acceptable vegan substitute. I used to love plain yogurt and ate it with all kinds of savory dishes, usually to cool down something spicy. Now I just do without it. I occasionally buy sweet flavors of vegan yogurt, usually because I'm taking antibiotics or have a sore throat and want something that will be smooth going down, but never plain. Usually I do just fine without yogurt in my life, but this particular chick pea recipe spoke to me, and for some reason I didn't want to go the silken tofu and lemon juice route again.
Have you found a vegan yogurt that satisfies? If you have, please share it in the comments.
We've only just gotten plain soy yoghurt here in Australia. We have the same problem- there's no tartness to it, and it's good for cooking (I use it in Indian dishes too), but it's no good to eat on its own. There's a recipe for real, cultured yoghurt in Miyoko Schinner's Artisan Vegan Cheese that I'm looking forward to trying. Making my own yoghurt will save a lot of money, too!
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ReplyDeleteI (random VeganMoFo RSS reader that I am) will honestly just recommend making it yourself! Fatfreevegan has an awesome soy yogurt recipe- http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/01/making-soy-yogurt.html, which works quite well even with out the agar agar. There are multiple other methods to making it sans yogurt maker, and seriously after one batch, you'll never want to buy yogurt again (and if you keep up with the making, you never have to!)
ReplyDeleteNow, in the event that you don't use yogurt that much, you can easily freeze it up. As long as you're not trying to eat it plain and alone, a quick blend in a blender will bring it back to a reasonable state where you can use it in baking or cooking.
I pretty much refuse to use store bought yogurt for anything savory. I made tzazhiki once with "plain" soy yogurt and never again! Plain always tastes sweet and flavored. Plus! making it myself is cheaper :) I've also used it successfully to add some tang to tofu ricotta, as a replacement sour cream, and strained as a "cream cheese" substitute for cheese cake and spreads (add some chives and garlic!).
I prefer almond milk over dairy milk and there are some good vegan cheeses, but non-dairy yogurt has been a disappointment. I miss greek yogurt way more than cheese.
ReplyDeleteSounds like making my own yogurt is the way to go. That would be a good MoFo project. . . .
ReplyDeleteDo it! My one recommendation with choosing a soymilk is a very plain tasting, unsweetened one. I'll often use half homemade (so just beans and water) and half Whole Food's unsweetened (or I used Silk before we lived by a Whole Foods). You find with a lot of other unsweetened ones that their "natural flavoring" and such are still over powering.
DeleteWhole Soy is good, but it is definitely more of a dessert yogurt. Wildwood has a more interesting flavor, a bit creamier. If you can find unsweetened plain of either, that might be more your taste. The unsweetened flavors are *quite* tart.
ReplyDeleteUnsweetened would be great. I haven't seen unsweetened Whole Soy, but the Wildwood looked unsweetened to me.
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