Chobani Strained Yoghurt Cooking Recipes

Last month, I received an email to invite me for a dinner with Chobani. I was wondering who or what is Chobani as I had not heard or seen them before. So I went to Google them and found out that they make strained yoghurt. Their yoghurt are made with only naturally-sourced ingredients, free of preservatives and artificial flavours. It is also fat free, it includes 5 live & active cultures and have twice the protein of regular yoghurt. They are safe for those with nut and soy allergies and suitable for vegetarians.

The company was founded in 2005 by Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant to the USA who couldn’t find any decent strained yoghurt in America. So he bought a yoghurt plant recently closed down by Kraft. The first cup of Chobani finally hit shelves 18 months later and has since grown to become America’s #1 yoghurt. They launched in the UK market in September last year and are stocked in over 450 Tesco stores. I must admit that I had not looked at this brand before as I always just picked up our usual brands.

So a group of West Midland food bloggers were invited to Edmund’s restaurant in Birmingham to try out their Chobani recipes. The chef had made a list of scrumptious delicious top class foods with Chobani yoghurt. It was a three course meal with two or three options for each.

We had this potato soup served in a mini cup as an appetizer!

The starter was the Roasted Breast of Palombe Pigeon with Blueberry Chobani dressing, Chobani & beetroot purée, candied beetroot and spring onion salad. The chef cleverly used the yoghurt as a sauce/dip. I have never thought of using yoghurt as a dip before. This had me thinking to use it as base for a dip for a roasted chicken thigh with passion fruit yoghurt. Please see below.

The main dish was a slow cooked Lemon Chobani marinated fillet of Brixham Brill, crushed Ratte potatoes and pink grapefruit, wilted spinach, Chobani and coconut foam. This fusion of yoghurt with fish worked so well! I really would have loved them to serve me another plate! I could not get enough of the lovely fish dish.

The dessert was a Chobani raspberry soufflé with vanilla ice cream. It was so beautifully cooked and the raspberry flavour was very intense and of course, delicious.

Before we left, we were served with coffee/tea and petit fours! I was very impressed with all the courses particularly as the Chobani blends so well into each dish!

The lovely people from Chobani also sent me a box of their yummy yoghurt and recipe cards. So I decided to make a few dishes using the yoghurt.

Roasted Skinless Chicken Thigh with Passion Fruit Yoghurt. This is a very simple roasted dish where I used the yoghurt as a sauce for the chicken! The yoghurt is very thick and comes with passion fruits bits at the bottom of the pot. I gave it a quick stir and placed it on the bottom on my plate. It made the chicken taste quite interesting. I love how I could used the yoghurt as a sauce too.

We also made strawberry banana smoothies. We used a handful of fresh strawberries, 2 bananas, one scoop of vanilla ice cream, two pots of Chobani strawberry yoghurt, 200 ml milk. This is our smoothie! It is so healthy and Mr K loves it!

We tried all the different flavours: plain, passion fruit, strawberry, raspberry,  pineapple and lemon. They are definitely thick and creamy as it mentions on their packaging and some come with real fruit bits in it. For me, they have the right amount of fruit portion in each pot – the yoghurt is not overly powered by the fruits nor the yoghurt itself.  We love the yoghurt.  I am not a big fan of any yoghurt (Mr K and Mr C are generally the yoghurt monsters in our house) but I would recommend my followers to give it a try and I am sure you will love it.

Disclosure: I was invited to attend the event and received the products for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own.