review: siggi's orange & ginger skyr yogurt

A yogurt I've been coveting for years went on sale last week -- siggi's Icelandic-style skyr (strained nonfat yogurt). It usually costs ~3 bucks for a 6-ounce cup, which is why I'd never tried it before, but comes in flavors like pomegranate & passion fruit and orange & ginger, which is why I've been wanting to. I picked up a cup each of the above, and had the latter for breakfast today.

Flavorwise, it's got just a tiny twinge of orange, right there in the front, that gets absolutely eaten by the flavors of the sharp minced ginger and sour yogurt. The ginger bits feel raw (with a crisp texture like tiny pieces of water chestnuts, if you've never chewed raw ginger). I think they'd do better on my palate if they'd been candied just a tad, for that texture as much as for the sweetness.

Re: The sweetness: I'm a huge proponent of low-sugar yogurt -- I think the stuff has a lovely flavor with very little doctoring, and get angry when something that's pitched as a healthy breakfast food has as much sugar as a serving of Coke (or a load of nasty-tasting artificial sweeteners). But the sourness to this yogurt was just on the wrong side of mouth-puckering for me. If I were going to eat this regularly, I might add a teaspoon of honey to it to take the edge off.

This yogurt is very, very thick -- the sort of thick that's heavy, the sort that you usually only get in something like ice cream. (This picture was not the oh-holy-quick-snap-the-photo sort of thing, but rather the take-several-shots-leisurely-and-consider-the-framing sort. The only reason that the spoonful stopped standing like that was that I ate it.) It's so thick that it's not very smooth -- the best way I can think to describe the texture is powerful. This is a yogurt that has some things to do. It will not suffer nonsense. It will nourish you. It's the Juggernaut of yogurts. And, I mean, it's got 10 grams of sugar (most of that'll be lactose -- unsweetened yogurt has ~9+ grams of sugar per serving) and 16 grams of protein per 6-ounce serving, and is fat free. It can walk the walk.

I'm glad I tried it, but honestly I'd never pay full price for this stuff. It's very interesting, but not quite pleasant, and I'm not looking for so much challenge from my yogurt. But personal taste is personal -- if you love the sharp flavor of plain yogurt and have the dollars to spend, you should try Siggi's. (I'll let you know if the pomegranate & passion fruit flavor changes my mind about the brand.)


For the record, my go-to yogurt of choice right now is Stonyfield Farm's Oikos Greek-style yogurt, vanilla flavor. It's creamy-thick and just a bit sour, with only 11 grams of sugar and a nice 15 grams of protein per serving, and is fat free. Sometimes I sugar-splurge on flavored yogurts, too -- my favorites for texture (thick), flavor (sweet-tart), sugar/protein ratio (low), and price (~$1 per serving) are Cascade Fresh's key lime flavor (16/7 g sugar/protein, nonfat) and, for soy yogurt, WholeSoy's apricot-mango flavor (19/6 g sugar/protein, with 3.5 g fat [0 saturated]). If I'm going for yogurt-as-dessert, nothing I've had compares to Brown Cow's cream top line, and specifically their maple flavor. It tastes and feels like maple custard pie filling (I engage in evasive spoon tactics to save the tongue-coatingly rich cream top for last), and has about as much nutritional value (21/5 g sugar/protein, with 7 g fat [4 saturated]).

What's your favorite yogurt -- food-shaped, dessert-shaped, frozen, or otherwise?


[p.s. -- I've written up a review of siggi's pomegranate & passion fruit yogurt, available for consumption here.]