Blueberry Yogurt Instead of Blueberry Flavored Yogurt, There's A Huge Difference...

 We all know how the advertising industry has done a marvelously sinister job in brainwashing many of us into believing that convenience foods are actually good and also “convenient”. OK, case in point let’s compare our homegrown blueberry yogurt against the ..ugh.. pre-made fruit in the cup stuff.

 But before we actually get into prep time we need to take a step back and review some of the experimentation we’ve done so far ..

 The first thing we tried was just taking fresh blueberries and plopping them into a cup of yogurt (we like using mugs instead of bowls because you get enough for a serving and you also have the cup handle to hold the concoction without heating it up with your hands, cold of course is best tasting for yogurt. By the way if you haven’t gotten into the habit of keeping a few mugs and thick-walled glasses in the frig for treats and smoothies you should start.. this is one of those no-effort things that really makes a difference). Anyway, the results were pretty good. You could taste the tanginess of the yogurt as well as the texture and burst of flavor you’d get when you’d bite into one of the blueberries. OK, but we thought we could do better.

 Next, we thought that we should toss the blueberries and yogurt into a blender and pulse it a few times. Well, even with a judicious few pulses the yogurt took on a blue color and was pretty much smoothed out with only a few blueberry skins. As far as taste it had a fairly uniform blueberry thing going on. The separate tanginess of the yogurt really dropped out and that’s something we missed.

 Finally, we tried placing the whole blueberries into a mug and smooshing them with a fork. Just enough to break the berries. Then we stirred in the yogurt. .. What we got was a concoction that still maintained the tanginess of the yogurt but there was also a second note of blueberry. And, this subtle blueberry flavor would kick up big time every time we took a bite of the smooshed berries. In short, this was the best of the three in our opinion. However, we recommend that you play with all three methods and find the one that’s your personal fav.

 Anyway, no need for a step by step recipe on this one since everything is explained above. However, we did find that adding just a little honey gave you some sweetness and that honey flavor which played nicely with the other two ingredients (..but be careful not to go overboard with this addition).

 By the way if you ever looked at that gelled up mess they call blueberries in the pre-mixed you have to wonder what they were thinking. Just consider how could you take a fresh berry and toss it in liquid yogurt for quite a while and still expect it to taste fresh. .. I guess that’s why they tend to doll it up with who knows what. Anyway in a taste comparison there’s no contest. Fresh berries and fresh yogurt trounces the pre-made stuff. .. Now in terms of convenience, we timed how mush longer it took to take out the fresh berries, pull a stray stem or two off, wash in water, smoosh and add to the yogurt. Well, this took a gran total of one minute. .. and it was soo inconvenient.

 Time to go natural and get off of the factory food.

 Why not send this post to any cooking challenged foodie you may know. This “recipe” may be enough to build their cooking confidence and expose them to what quality really taste like. Sort of your good deed for the day.

Related Post:

• Review of Horizon Fat-Free Plain Yogurt