Use Recommended Cookware and Utensils

Do not use aluminum or copper bowls, pans, or utensils when cooking with yoghurt. Aluminum and copper react with yoghurt's high acidic content and can cause discoloring. Instead, use bowls, pans, and utensils made of glass, ceramic, stainless steel, plastic, wood, or Teflon.

Note: In our Recipes, for brevity, we always instruct you to mix yoghurt and other ingredients in a glass or ceramic bowl, but plastic, Teflon, and stainless steel work just as well. Just don’t use aluminum or copper!

Be Gentle and Avoid Excessive Heat

• Yoghurt has a delicate structure, so it’s best to fold or stir it gently into other ingredients.
• Avoid blending too long or overprocessing in a food processor, unless you’re making a drink or batter.
• Avoid high temperatures and long cooking times. In addition to destroying yoghurt's beneficial cultures, high heat may cause curdling and separation (although flavor won’t be affected). This is not really a problem in baked goods, however, where yoghurt is added mostly for texture and moisture.
• Add it to soups or sauces near or at the end of cooking times,if possible.
• If you must add yoghurt early in heated recipes, stir 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour or 1 tablespoon of cornstarch into each cup of yoghurt before cooking. When protected this way, you can bring yoghurt to a boil and cook 1 to 2 minutes to thicken.
• Alternatively, to avoid curdling, you may also fold yoghurt into a recipe at the end of its cooking time, after turning off the heat, simply warming the yoghurt to serving temperature.
• Refrigerate leftover yoghurt-based foods promptly.

4 Tips for Baking with Yoghurt
Yoghurt works best in muffins, quick breads, and sweet breads. These moister batters can best tolerate the water that yoghurt introduces but that oil doesn’t contain. Here are a few tips to keep your breads light and luscious.    

1. Yoghurt can replace milk very easily since both are high in moisture. A 1:1 swap is usually just right. 
2. When using yoghurt to replace oil, we recommend 3 parts yoghurt to one part oil. That’s because you still need some oil to coat the proteins in the other ingredients. Fat allows particle separation, which aids in texture development.
3. If your recipe calls for lots of oil, we suggest trying yoghurt cheese. Yoghurt cheese is made by allowing the whey to drain off the yoghurt, removing much of the water content. Replace three parts of the oil with yoghurt cheese and keep one part oil. For example, use ¾ cup of yoghurt cheese and ¼ cup of oil to replace 1 cup of oil.
4. Because yoghurt is naturally acidic, it also serves as a leavening aide by helping the baking soda react and emit carbon dioxide. There is usually no need to adjust your leavening ingredients unless you notice a big difference in texture. Our Whole Wheat Peasant Bread, for example, has a lot of structure because the yoghurt works well with the other ingredients to produce a balanced recipe.

If you have your own favorite quick bread recipe, try swapping out the oil with our Plain Original Style yoghurt. The Original Style will provide both moisture and some milk fat, creating a lovely mouth feel and texture, and sparing you the many calories in oil.

Learn more!
Click here to learn about how to substitute Mountain High Yoghurt for higher fat ingredients like sour cream or mayonnaise. Click here to learn about making your own flavors and treats with easy mix in ideas. Click here to learn how to adjust recipes for cooking at high altitudes.