Making your own dairy-free yogurt isn’t nearly as hard as you might think, and only requires a handful of ingredients.

The only specialty ingredient you’re not likely to have just kicking around your cupboards is agar agar, a non-animal derived setting agent that’s actually derived from seaweed. Agar agar sets a little differently from gelatine or cornflour, yielding a much stronger jelly than cornfour, but a “crunchier” texture than gelatine. It works great for making yogurt, so long as you use it in the right quantity and properly dissolve it before use.

This tangy, fragrant yogurt goes great with any spicy Indian dish, tempering the heat and adding some extra zing. One of my favourite parts of any meal is those last morsels of hot, spicy curry with those last grains of rice, just begging to be mixed up together with a dollop of cooling tangy yogurt. Perhaps it’s an idiosyncrasy of mine, but it’s a beautiful balancing act of flavour and texture, and perhaps you’ll also fall in love with this little foodie flirtation for the palate when you try it 😉

Here’s how to whip up a batch of non-dairy yogurt to temper any spicy dish… 😉

Flavour: tangy and fragrant

Yield: approx 400ml

Ingredients:

• 400ml coconut cream (however you like it – canned, home-made, or reconstituted from coconut cream powder with water – it all works fine)
• 1 teaspoon agar agar – the powdered kind
• half teaspoon salt
• quarter cup boiling water
• juice of half a lime
• small bunch coriander, finely chopped

Directions:

1. Stir agar agar and salt into boiling water until dissolved – this might take a while, but it’s important you get the agar agar fully dissolved if you’re to have luck with yogurt
2. Stir your dissolved agar agar and salt water into your coconut cream in a bowl, and refrigerate for an hour until cooled and semi-set
3. Remove from fridge and stir in lime juice and coriander, and return to fridge in a sealed container until you plan to use it