I am a regular purchaser of Greek yogurt and there are two brands that dominate that section at my local grocery store: Chobani and Farmer's Union - a brand that I recently discovered is fake Greek yogurt as they have in tiny print below the word "Greek" they put "style" so that means it isn't and never was, genuine Greek yogurt.
I'm still upset about that but I will never purchase anything made by Farmer's Union ever again because of this deception.
As it turns out you can't call any Greek yogurt "Greek" unless it is produced using some very specific methods and I don't care to get into that. I just buy Chobani now because it is always available and unlike Farmer's Union, they are not trying to deceive their customers with tricky wording and portion sizes. It's legit.
Keep in mind that with this particular discovery I am ONLY referring to this specific type of greek yogurt although it may apply to other brands and versions with higher levels of fat in them.
I accidentally double purchased this container one day when I had a bit of a brain fart moment and couldn't remember if I had already bought it. I don't like to waste time and am annoyed by the crowds that are virtually everywhere in my city so rather than take the chance at being wrong, I just bought one.
When I got home I opened the fridge to put my stuff away and what was staring me right in the face? Another container of Chobani light Greek yogurt that I had purchased the day before. I can only remember so many things and lately I have been reading a book that is kind of out of my intellectual level so I gave myself a pass for screwing this up. However, dairy doesn't just last forever, and rancid yogurt is just as bad as rancid milk so I had two choices: Either star eating Greek yogurt like a madman or freeze one of these containers.
I chose the latter.
When i pulled the frozen Chobani out of the freezer and left it on the counter for the whole day while I was out I came back and put it in the fridge before it got too war. The next day I opened it and at first was kind of turned off by the texture because it had completely changed.
Anyone that regularly consumes Greek yogurt probably already knows that it has a strange and very thick consistency that can sometimes prove a bit difficult to work with especially if you are like me and you transfer it into a bowl on a scale so that you get an exact amount.
The consistency had changed to a near chunky liquid and at first I was afraid of it but gave it a test taste and it tastes exactly the same as it did before I froze it but now it is just more maneuverable, so to speak. So now, getting my 150 grams into the bowl was actually a lot easier than it had been before when I was slamming the spoon on the side of a bowl and probably causing mild damage to my nutrition scale. Now I could probably, but still don't, pour it straight into the bowl.
I know this seems like a very minor thing but this is actually a game-changer for me because at the end of my average container use there is also a lot of waste because I simply cannot be asked to get into the nooks and crannies of the container to get the last scraps out of the container. Greek yogurt costs about 3 times as much as regular yogurt, so this is probably saving me a bit (a tiny bit) of money at the same time.
Apparently this is well-known in fitness and nutrition circles but I had never heard of it. The texture of the yogurt after the freeze is more like a liquid than like Greek yogurt, but apparently a lot of people use this intentionally in order to create things more easily like smoothies, dips, and other such things where the normally quite thick nature of the yogurt can kind of be a nuisance.
For me, I mix the yogurt with oats and berries or some other fruit, and sometimes the thickness of it all ends up being not so nice and it can be a bit dry in some parts but NOT ANYMORE!
I kind of prefer my bowl to be more like oatmeal than a salad and to me, this works a lot better.
So if you dear reader are someone that likes Greek yogurt but the texture/thickness of it is kind of annoying to you, just know that the only thing you need to do is freeze and then thaw that bad boy!