Matsoni substitutes

Ordinary unsweetened set yogurt, the substitute almost everyone will actually use.

Best for

eating with honey, fruit or walnuts, Georgian and Armenian soups, marinades for chicken and lamb, khachapuri and other doughs, cold sauces

Works everywhere, with one clear difference: commercial yogurt is cultured hot with thermophilic bacteria and comes out distinctly more acidic, so where matsoni tastes gentle and almost milky-sweet, yogurt tastes tart. In a soup or a marinade that hardly registers. Eaten plain from a bowl it does, and a teaspoon of honey or a spoonful of cream per cup is enough to soften it. Yogurt is also smoother, missing matsoni's faint elastic pull.

Nordic room-temperature soured milks cultured with closely related mesophilic bacteria.

Best for

eating plain, breakfast bowls, home fermenting with no incubator, pouring over fruit or muesli

The best match on character, because these are cultured the same way matsoni is and land in the same mild, buttery, barely-sour register rather than yogurt's sharp one. Filmjolk is smooth and pourable, so it is a shade thinner than matsoni; viili is ropier, so it overshoots on stretch. Either is a much closer eating experience than yogurt. For anyone keeping a live culture at home, they behave identically to matsoni on the counter.

Strained yogurt let back down to matsoni's soft pourable-but-set consistency.

Best for

soups and stews, sauces that must not run, marinades, spooning over vegetables

Useful when you want body and stability, since the higher protein resists curdling better in a hot dish. Straight from the tub it is far too stiff and far too tart to stand in for matsoni, so thinning is not optional. Even thinned it tastes cleaner and sourer, so in a sweet application add honey. Whisk it smooth before thinning or the milk will not incorporate evenly.

Fermented milk cultured with bacteria and yeasts, thin, sour and faintly fizzy.

Best for

drinking, marinades, baking, cold soups

The furthest from matsoni in personality. Matsoni is thick, mild and gentle; kefir is thin, sharply sour and slightly yeasty with a prickle on the tongue. In a marinade or a batter that difference is irrelevant and kefir performs well. As a bowl of breakfast it reads as an entirely different food, so cut it half and half with plain yogurt if you want to close the gap.

Cultured pourable milk, thin and sour, mainly useful when matsoni is an ingredient rather than a dish.

Best for

baking and doughs, pancakes, cold soups, marinades

Right acidity, wrong body. In any batter it substitutes well, because all the recipe wants from matsoni is sour liquid, and it reacts with baking soda the same way. It is far too thin to eat with a spoon and tastes saltier and sharper than matsoni, so keep it to the mixing bowl.

Strained fresh dairy loosened to matsoni thickness, with quark being the milder of the two.

Best for

high-protein swaps, spoonable breakfast bowls, dips and fillings, soups off the heat

Quark is the better choice here because it is mild and only lightly acidic, much closer to matsoni's gentleness than skyr, which is very tart. Both are thicker than matsoni and slightly grainy where matsoni is glossy, so thin them well and whisk hard. Good when you want matsoni's substance and do not mind a fresh-cheese note in place of its yogurt tang.