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64 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Information Even If <Gasp> You're a Meat Eater, December 3, 2003
This review is from: Eat Well The YoChee Way: The Easy and Delicious Way to Cut Fat and Calories with Natural YoChee [Yogurt Cheese] (Paperback)
Well organized with good menu selections, the Goldbecks make sure you know they want you to become a vegetarian. I have found the most useful recipes to be the appetizers and desserts, where coincidently, you can usually find the highest fat conventional items! Also, the OneEggLess recipe notes are splendid. The omlette is delicious and tastes even better with some pico de gallo or hot sauce! The entrees, heavy on tofu and other soy protein, are somewhat repetitive, but they give lots of options for "making your own" recipes off of their bases. I'm sure they'd be appalled that I've converted some of their vegetarian/vegan recipes to include chicken, pork and lean beef, but yogurt cheese is as advertised, a very useful and healthy product. We eat a lot of tofu and miso already in our diets (we eat Asian style about 4 times a week) so I didn't feel the need to up my soy intake any further. I do make sure I use organic, non-GMO (genetically modified) soy products. The Goldbergs also stress adding the veggies in their book, as well as in their other book, The Healthiest Diet in the World. They have a good point, and I really like their ideas. I make yogurt cheese with a Donvier Deluxe Yogurt Cheese Maker rather that the strainer or funnel method. You can "set it and forget it" in the fridge overnight, and yes indeed, if you can use a spoon, you *can* make yogurt cheese. I like using my own homemade yogurt, IMO it tastes worlds better than even organic store bought. I use a 1 quart Salton idiot-proof yogurt maker. I make it with organic 1% milk for a just a hint of fat for taste. Sometimes I "cut" the 1% with some Nonfat. I use the Yogourmet starter that I get at my natural foods store every third batch, using 1/2 c of made yogurt the other times. We started using yogurt cheese in addition to adding flax to our diet to help reduce our cholesterol/saturated fat. We'll see how that works out. In the meantime, our food tastes great and we're packing in the nutrients, getting "creamy" yummy stuff, and all the while cutting fat. My kinda cookin' :D
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48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Making YoChee is quite simple!, February 8, 2005
This review is from: Eat Well The YoChee Way: The Easy and Delicious Way to Cut Fat and Calories with Natural YoChee [Yogurt Cheese] (Paperback)
YoChee, or yogurt cheese, is a concentrated form of yogurt used in cooking and baking that you can make at home with the right yogurt and some very simple steps. Eat Well The YoChee Way: Guide and 275 Recipes guides the reader through making YoChee and gives a variety of ways you can use the thickened, creamy substance to replace more fatty, creamy ingredients in recipes such as spreads, breads, casseroles, pastas, desserts and breakfast recipes.
I am a yogurt fanatic, just ask my college roommates. It was the joke in our apartment that we could always count on one thing in the fridge (and surprisingly for college students it wasn't beer) -- Dana's yogurt. So I was excited to try making YoChee. Yogurt has numerous health properties associated with it, including live and active yogurt cultures that promote healthy digestion and the body's yeast fighting powers, high amounts of calcium and a vegetarian source of high-quality protein with much less fat than found in other dairy products such as cheeses.
I was surprised to read that YoChee (in a variety of other names) has been used in Middle Eastern cooking for generations. This gave me confidence that, if it's been made for generations, it must be easy enough to prepare. But the instructions page seems a bit more complicated than the actual process of making YoChee turned out to be. And a mention of the "specially designed draining device" that the reader can buy from the YoChee.com website made me wonder if I could make this at home without buying the recommended equipment.
Turns out, making YoChee was quite simple. It's as easy as buying a yogurt without any thickening agents, stabilizers, gelatin or gums in it (Dannon Plain contains milk only and is relatively inexpensive), then setting a cone wire coffee filter on top of a jar, filling it with Yogurt and allowing the watery substance leak out of the yogurt for a number of hours (mine sat for about six to eight hours). You can also use a colander and cheesecloth set over a bowl, although I can imagine scraping the YoChee out of the cheesecloth may be messy. The end results looks like a whole-milk sour cream or a cream cheese.
I used the YoChee to make sweet biscuits, which were very good. The YoChee took the place of a shortening or butter ingredient. With 7 grams of protein per biscuit, 150 mg of calcium and less than one gram of saturated fat, this recipe trumps any traditional biscuit recipe in health properties and tastes just as flavorful and heartier than the average biscuit.
Other recipes I'd like to try with my next batch of YoChee include a Quick Creamy Bean Stew, Eggplant and Potato Curry, Superior Spinach Dip, YoChee Pesto and a frozen dessert snack "cube" called Cocoa Chunks that the book says you can store in the freezer and "pop in your mouth when the mood hits."
Almost any recipe that uses butter, cream cheese, sour cream or mayonnaise appears to be able use YoChee as a healthy substitute to these high fat ingredients. I recommend trying YoChee and reading this book to yogurt lovers, dairy consuming vegetarians, people with lactose intolerance or anyone who wants to lower their fat intake while increasing their intake of calcium, protein and live active yogurt cultures.
The book says you can use cow, goat, sheep or soy yogurt. However, all the recipes in the book were tested with only cow's milk. In my own yogurt quest over the years, I've tried soy yogurt and not liked it because it felt too "gummy" to me, but that could be because I tried a brand with gums or thickeners in it, which is a no-no for making YoChee. Perhaps there's a soy yogurt brand out there without any of those additives in it, and then it would work fine. --D.Anderson-Villamagna
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
YoChee gives foods that melt-in-your-mouth sensation., September 27, 2001
This review is from: Eat Well The YoChee Way: The Easy and Delicious Way to Cut Fat and Calories with Natural YoChee [Yogurt Cheese] (Paperback)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I love "Eat Well The YoChee Way" guide and 275 recipes book. Along with being professionally written, organized, and easy to use; it is very informative. I am extremely lactose intolerance and I have no problems eating YoChee. I love the creamy sauces and silky desserts which I was unable to eat before. YoChee really does have the pleasurable mouthfeel of high fat foods. The only problem I have is keeping enough YoChee handy to make all these wonderful healthy foods possible. I am culinary challenged and still find these recipes easy to put together. They range from the simple no cook recipes to the more elaborate elegant dinning recipes. Talk about easy to make, I have started buying yogurt by the case. YoChee is so versatile, I no longer have the need to use mayo, sour cream, cream cheese or butter in recipes. Even my 7 year old son loves YoChee; douse veggies and he asks for seconds. It's a fun way for him to get his daily protein and calcium, and don't forget the positive cancer fighting properties that eating yogurt claims. I can't say enough great things about this book. I want to thank the Goldbeck's personally for the introduction of YoChee as it has made my diet more healthy. Everyone can use more calcium in their diet. I challenge you to receive the renowned benefits of yogurt by adding YoChee to your diet. The Goldberk's personal customer service is also outstanding.
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