The Best Plain Yogurt | Reviews by Wirecutter
The US Food and Drug Administration maintains strict parameters for yogurt’s milk-fat content, pH levels, and acceptable added ingredients. But from a consumer’s point of view, yogurt is simply a thickened dairy product made from a combination of milk and live active cultures — commonly probiotic bacteria like Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus, among others. The milk gets heated and cooled, and then the cultures are added. The mixture is incubated for several hours until it thickens and sets, and then it’s refrigerated. And voilà, you have yogurt.
Traditional yogurts are unstrained, which gives them a relatively high concentration of whey. This style is sometimes called “plain yogurt,” but plain can also refer to yogurts that are unflavored and unsweetened.
All of the yogurts we sampled during our tasting process — both traditional and Greek — were unflavored and unsweetened. To avoid confusion, we identified the unstrained yogurts as “traditional” rather than “plain.”
Greek yogurts are made much in the same way as traditional yogurts, with the primary difference being that they are strained of whey after incubation. The straining process results in a noticeably thick yogurt that typically contains twice the protein and half of the lactose (the natural sugar found in milk) of traditional yogurts.
In order to narrow down the vast field of yogurts, we focused our tasting on brands that met the following criteria:
Traditional or Greek: The yogurts in our taste test were all traditional style (unstrained) or Greek (strained). We excluded Bulgarian yogurts and Icelandic skyr to keep the first round of testing manageable, but we will consider testing them in the future, seeing as both have grown in popularity in recent years.
Unflavored and unsweetened: All of the yogurts we tasted were unflavored and did not include any added sweeteners. This approach allowed us to assess the unadulterated flavors and textures produced by the milk and cultures.
Cow’s milk only: While there are yogurts made from other milks, including goat, sheep, and non-dairy, we only tested cow’s milk yogurt, because it’s the most common.
National distribution: We prioritized yogurts that have wide distribution and are reasonably easy to find across the country.
Gelatin-free: The majority of yogurts we tested contain no additives. A handful include food starch or pectin, which are sometimes added to promote emulsification. (We’ve noted which ones in our picks.) We drew the line at gelatin, which can be a problematic ingredient for vegetarians and an indication that a company has taken shortcuts in the culturing process.
Over the course of four tasting sessions, a panel of tasters made their way through 54 yogurts from 20 brands.
We decanted each yogurt from its original container into an unmarked tasting cup. Sampling the yogurts with their brands concealed allowed tasters to form opinions without any preconceived bias.
We tasted the yogurts by category over several days, beginning with traditional (unstrained) yogurts in nonfat, low-fat, and whole milk varieties, followed by Greek yogurts (also nonfat, low-fat, and whole).
We sampled them first unadorned and then with granola, honey, maple syrup, and fresh berries to assess how they fared alone and in concert with other ingredients. We also offered bowls of chana masala, so that testers could try the yogurts with savory food.
While tasting, we kept the following attributes in mind:
Flavor: Yogurt can range from milky and mild to tart and puckery. Some have grassy or barnyard notes, while others are sweet and butterfat-forward. When it comes to flavor, the “quality of the milk is tantamount,” said Homa Dashtaki, founder of The White Moustache, a small-batch yogurt company based in Brooklyn, New York. We noted the distinct mix of flavors in each yogurt and judged which ones we found to be the most delicious or off-putting.
Texture: There is a wide spread of textures in yogurt, with traditional yogurts ranging from wet and loose to silky and luscious, and Greek yogurts falling along the spectrum of thick and rich to stiff and starchy. Testers took note of each yogurt’s texture and how it compared with others in its category. For us, the most popular textures in both categories tended to skew rich and luscious.
Compatibility: The granola, berries, and chana masala on the testing table helped testers make tough decisions between similar yogurts. The best yogurts stood out on their own and also made tasty companions or foils to the other ingredients.
After we completed tasting through a category, our testers compared notes to decide which yogurts to advance to the next round. The finalists were then sampled a second time (and in some cases, a third and fourth) to decide our picks.
