I often make this light yogurt sauce because being on a diet doesn’t mean eating bland food; you still need to dress dishes while keeping fats to a minimum. A little good olive oil is also useful to better absorb fiber, but how can you make a little oil be enough to dress, for example, an entire plate of salad? This yogurt sauce comes in handy. Plain unsweetened yogurt, mixed with garlic, spices and herbs, becomes a tasty but light dip to dress many foods.
This is a vegan sauce made with soy yogurt, but you can of course use other yogurts; the important thing is that they are plain and unsweetened. In this recipe I also explain how to prepare a thicker base: this is then flavored to create different dressings — in particular you’ll find 4 different flavors, my favorites.
Here are some other basic recipes that are handy for preparing other dishes:
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very inexpensive
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 5 Minutes
- Portions: 2
- Cooking methods: No-cook
- Cuisine: Healthy
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients
I listed the ingredients to add for the different versions and then I explain the details in the steps.
- 1 1/4 cups soy yogurt (unsweetened)
- 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil (measuring teaspoon)
- 1 clove garlic
- to taste salt
- ground cumin
- turmeric powder
- paprika
- sweet mustard
- chopped parsley
- chives
- agave syrup (or maple syrup)
Tools
- Bowl
- Sieve
- Garlic press
- Knife
- Small bowl
Steps
If your yogurt is very runny it’s better to drain it before preparing the yogurt sauce. Prepare a bowl and place a fine-mesh sieve over it, or line a colander with cheesecloth or a clean kitchen towel washed without perfumed detergents.
Pour the yogurt into the sieve, cover and let drain for at least one hour so the liquid can run off and the yogurt becomes firmer and creamier.
To prepare the sauce base finely chop the garlic or crush it with a garlic press. Mix the yogurt with the garlic, the oil and a little salt. The basic dressing is ready but if you don’t use it immediately store it in the fridge in an airtight container for a few days.
To flavor the yogurt sauce you can add other ingredients and create new flavors each time. Here are my suggestions:
cumin: a little ground cumin mixed with 2 tsp of agave syrup.
turmeric and paprika: a little turmeric and paprika powder mixed with 2 tsp of agave syrup.
herbs: chopped parsley and chives.
mustard: 1 tsp of creamy mustard mixed with 2 tsp of agave syrup.
Our light yogurt sauce is ready to enjoy! All four flavors are very tasty and very light, perfect for dressing salads or other vegetables, boiled or roasted potatoes, and also for dipping crudités or warmed and sliced pita bread.
Of course you can vary the added ingredients to flavor the yogurt base to your taste: just use a bit of imagination. Do you have other flavor ideas? Leave me a comment below and I’ll try them!
Enjoy!
by Giovanna Buono
Storage
Both the yogurt base and each ready yogurt sauce variation keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. I don’t freeze yogurt so I’ve never tried freezing this sauce.
FAQ (Questions & Answers)
I don’t like garlic, can I omit it?
Certainly you can omit the garlic if you don’t like the taste; the sauce will be milder. If the problem is that you can’t digest garlic, you can replace it with garlic powder which, at least for me, doesn’t cause digestion issues. A reader also suggested blanching the garlic for 3 minutes in boiling water and repeating this operation 5 times: laborious but it works for her!
