This chemist reveals the mistake you should not make to obtain a good yogurt sauce

Yogurt sauce is perfect for bringing a little freshness, lightness and creaminess to your dish. It can perfectly accompany dips as an aperitif, but also makes an excellent sauce for dipping white fish. To make it, the ingredients are very simple: yogurt (brewed, Greek, farm), aromatic ingredients such as a drizzle of olive oil, lemon, chopped garlic or shallot, a little mint, coriander, thyme, basil… and little extras if you want them: pine nuts, capers, dried tomatoes, tuna… You just have to let your desires and your imagination speak. For Raphaël Haumont, a French physical chemist, there are, however, a few tips for making a good yogurt sauce perfectly.

To become yogurt, milk needs heat. “The ferments need gentle and constant heat to “eat” the lactose in the milk and transform it into lactic acid. As the medium becomes acidic, the proteins in the milk begin to cling to each other, and gel. This is why this liquid milk becomes a firm and unmoldable yogurt.” explains the chemist to Hello Doctors.

So, to make a good yogurt sauce, it is essential, according to the professional, to avoid tangy sauces. This could disrupt gelling. “Cold, this can still work if you have other ingredients to make a sauce (oil, herbs, etc.), but hot, if you add yogurt to lengthen a lemon or mustard sauce for example, it “It’s a guaranteed disaster!” specifies the expert.

Likewise, it is best to avoid heating your yogurt to make a sauce. To bind a sauce with yogurt, it is advisable to wait until serving time, when the heat of the dish has dropped to 50 or 60°C. The yogurt will allow you to give creaminess to your preparation.

The specialist also advises using yogurt to replace crème fraîche in your dishes. This makes them much less greasy. In fact, we find between 1% and 3% fat in homemade or natural commercial yogurt compared to 15 to 35% in cream. The recommendations are the same: “not too hot or acidic, otherwise your mixture will coagulate” concludes the specialist.