Food, Home & Lifestyle
Homemade Condiments: Labneh
Lesson time 05:46 min
Learn how to make super-creamy, spreadable, and delicious labneh.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Labneh
Teaches Modern Middle Eastern Cooking
James Beard Award–winning chef Yotam Ottolenghi teaches you his recipes for delicious Middle Eastern platters layered with color and flavor.
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[00:00:00.00] [MUSIC PLAYING] [00:00:06.34] CHEF: Labneh is a strained yogurt, essentially. It's something that you find all around the Middle East. It's a wonderful thing. Some people would call it cheese. I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it a cheese. It's a bit like a cream cheese. So it's super creamy. It's spreadable. It's delicious. And you can use it for a million things that we'll talk about. But it's really, really lovely with berries. [00:00:28.77] So I've got here a colander. And it's lined with muslin. And if you don't have muslin, you can use any tea towel at home. Just one that you probably don't want to use again, because it becomes quite messy. And this is plain yogurt. Try to get a yogurt which is full fat, not a reduced fat yogurt, because labneh is supposed to be rich, beautifully rich. And it's kind of creamy, so it's a bit like cream. You really don't want to serve it with something which is low-fat. It just doesn't work. So I've got my full fat yogurt here, and I added quite a lot of salt, about 3/4 of a teaspoon. [00:01:09.28] And I'm just mixing it together so that the salt goes everywhere. And the salt draws the moisture out of the yogurt. So it will make it drain nicely. So you just mix it up really, really well. It's really nice to experiment with different types of yogurt when you make labneh. You can use cow, you can use goat, you can use sheep, but you can also use a mixture, which is really nice. Each one will give you slightly different flavor. it's going to be a bit more tangy if you use sheep, slightly creamier if you use goat. It's really nice to experiment with different types of yogurt. [00:01:50.54] The salt is equally dispersed in the yogurt. And then it's just a case of getting the yogurt into the muslin. And I love the smell of fresh yogurt. The labneh is a whole different ballgame. It's just so creamy. [00:02:19.36] And then you just kind of tuck it in nicely. And in order to get all that liquid out of the yogurt and make it as creamy as we want, you want to weigh it down a little bit. So you can take old cans and put them on, or anything else that you've got in your kitchen that is heavy. And you just put it on top of your labneh. [00:02:49.35] And this can go into the fridge, ideally for 12, 24 hours. And slowly, slowly, you'd start seeing the water coming out from the bottom as the yogurt loses all the moisture and turns into the creamy, beautiful thing that is labneh. [00:03:05.94] So I have one here that's been sitting for a while. And you'll see all this water all the way has been drained out of the yogurt, which is really, really, really amazing, because what you'll notice is that what I've got in here is really super, duper creamy. [00:03:29.80] It's lost at least half of its volume, if not more. And if you look into this beautiful bowl, you'll see how smooth and how creamy this thing is. And I always say it really reminds me of cream cheese. It's acidic like yogurt, and ...
About the Instructor
One of the most influential chefs working today, Yotam Ottolenghi creates dishes that layer color and flavor for maximum impact. Now the James Beard Award winner teaches you simple steps for making and mixing Middle Eastern–inspired recipes. Learn how to make generous platters—mezze and brunch spreads to homemade condiments, stunning stand-alones, and delicious vegetables—so you can entertain with ease.
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Yotam Ottolenghi
James Beard Award–winning chef Yotam Ottolenghi teaches you his recipes for delicious Middle Eastern platters layered with color and flavor.
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