Doogh
Yoghurt thinned with carbonated water, salted and finished with dried mint.
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
70 g plain yoghurt
1 g salt
90 ml soda water
0.5 g dried mint
- 70 g plain yoghurt
- 1 g salt
- 90 ml soda water
- 0.5 g dried mint
- ~40 ml water
Glass
Vessel
158 ml of liquid plus 230 ml of cubed ice occupies about 388 ml, inside the 400 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
2 steps · 45sWhisk the 70 g plain yoghurt and 1 g salt together for 30s, until smooth.
Pour over ice, top with the 90 ml soda water, stir once, and finish with the 0.5 g dried mint crumbled over the surface.
The soda water goes in last, stirred through only once, rather than whisked with the yoghurt; whisking it in the way the yoghurt and salt are combined beats out the carbonation the drink depends on.
Common pitfallFresh rather than dried mint turns the drink faintly bitter and grassy within minutes as the leaf bruises against the carbonation; dried mint seasons without that reaction.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel, not a rule of thumb.
About
Salted, carbonated yoghurt finished with dried mint, a drink whose name meant simply "milk" in Old Persian long before it meant this.
The name outlived several changes of meaning before it settled on this drink. It comes from the Persian dooshidan, to milk, and the word itself appears in Avestan scripture as another term for milk or for what milking produces 1. It appears again, centuries later, in Persian literature from the medieval period, and the physician Avicenna used it in the Canon of Medicine to denote milk in a medical context 1. This is evidence of a long, continuous presence in the language rather than of one invention at one date.
Traditionally it was made by churning yoghurt with whole milk in a skin bag, a method that both thinned the yoghurt and worked air into it, and modern versions still aim at the same texture using water, whey or seltzer in place of the bag 2. Iran's own food standards describe it formally as a drink made by diluting fermented yoghurt, or buttermilk before it ferments, to a standardised proportion of milk solids. This is a definition that treats doogh as a controlled dairy product as much as a folk drink 2.
Two features set it apart from its regional relatives. It is usually carbonated, historically by leaving the diluted yoghurt at room temperature for a day or two to ferment lightly on its own, and it is most often finished with mint alongside other herbs such as oregano rather than left plain 2. Both are matters of degree rather than of kind (ayran, Turkey's version of the same idea, is typically still and salted only), but they are consistent enough across recipes to count as what actually distinguishes doogh from the drink it most resembles.
- 1Dooghen.wikipedia.org
- 2Do the Dooghtastecooking.com