Greek Yogurt - a PSA

I'm sure by now you've heard of Greek yogurt. Seems like all the 'health segments' on all the talk shows have featured it in some way or another. Well, now it's my turn! LOL (and no, Dannon isn't compensating me or anything - this is just me!)

We've used it 3 different ways this week, all in place of sour cream.

1.) Zac made twice baked potatoes & used it to blend into the mashed potatoes with cheese, bacon & diced green onions, rather than sour cream. It incorporated nicely & tasted just like sour cream!

2.) Zac mixed some blue cheese, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, salt & pepper to make a blue cheese dressing to put on top of buffalo cheese burgers. It was great!!

3.) I made stroganoff for dinner last night & opted for the Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. This time the taste was fine, but visually it left something to be desired. It didn't melt down completely like sour cream does. It was heavily flecked with little white specks of yogurt proteins. Again, it tasted great - just didn't look as appetizing as it does when I use sour cream.

And I think next up we'll try making homemade Ranch dressing with it!

So, what are the benefits? Let's look at the labels - this is for about 1/2 cup of each.

Sour cream:
240 calories
20 grams of fat
4 grams of protein

Greek yogurt:
65 calories
0 grams of fat
12 grams of protein

HELLO!!!??? That's pretty impressive!
20 grams of fat vs ZERO!?
75% less calories!?
4 times the protein!

I think I'm a convert.

So, Greek yogurt gets my seal of approval for a few things - 1.) melting down in something that you won't see it in - like the mashed potatoes. Would also do great in sour cream enchiladas, I think! Or used in sour cream cookies! Definitely! 2.) Swapping out for cold sour cream occasions - like making a sandwich/burger spread. I can imagine that it would also work great in pasta or potato salad. I haven't tried it, but I bet it would even be great on top of your tacos or baked potatoes! But if you're melting it into something that's got a darker sauce, I'm afraid I'll still grab for the sour cream - high fat, high calories, low protein.... Oh well. Every once in a while is OK!