Make your very own skyr
Skyr is delicious in both sweet and savoury dishes. Photo: Iceland Monitor/Ásdís Ásgeirsdóttir
Making your own skyr at home is really not complicated, and it only takes three ingredients, plus some time. You’ll have to wait a bit, and fuss a bit, but it’s worth it.
Like when making home-made yoghurt, you’ll need a bit of the store bought stuff to get you started.
Ingredients:
- 5 litres skimmed milk
- 3 drops of rennet
- 1 tablespoon of store bought skyr
Put the milk in a pot and heat it to 90°C. Keep it that hot for about 5 minutes, and then cool it down to 43-40°C and mix the rennet and skyr thoroughly together with the warm milk.
Keep the mix at 40-50°C for 4-5 hours. This is easily done by putting your pot in bigger pot filled with hot water, checking on the temperatures every once in a while.
At this point you can see the skyr and the whey have separated in the pot. Fish the skyr out with a spatula and put it in a cheesecloth-lined strainer. Put it over a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, let it drain for 12 hours or longer, depending on the thickness you want.
This is pure skyr and can be used for either sweet or savoury dishes.
To go the traditional Icelandic way, add milk and sugar to the skyr and serve it with cream and blueberries. You can also try your way with different flavourings. The most recent hit in Iceland is liquorice flavoured skyr.
Icelanders are also very fond of using skyr for smoothies, as it's both low in fat and high in protein.
Skyr is not traditionally served with savoury dishes, but it’s a great base for a dip or as a dressing for salad or fish. Then its seasoned with salt, pepper, some herbs added and perhaps few drops of olive oil.
