Wondering what to do with frozen yogurt? This guide covers how to pick it, cook it, store it, and swap it, plus 10 recipes to put it to work.

What is frozen yogurt?

Frozen yogurt is cultured yogurt churned and frozen into a dessert. It sits between ice cream and sorbet: creamier than a fruit ice, lighter than ice cream, and carrying the same lactic tang that sets yogurt apart.

That tang is the signature. Where ice cream tastes purely sweet, frozen yogurt finishes with a clean, slightly sour edge.

How it differs from ice cream

The big difference is fat. Ice cream leans on cream and egg yolks for richness, while frozen yogurt is built mostly on yogurt or milk, so it carries far less butterfat.

Less fat is why it tastes lighter. It is also why texture takes more care, since fat is what keeps ice cream scoopable, and without much of it frozen yogurt freezes harder and can turn icy.

The fix is sugar and churning. Sugar lowers the freezing point so fewer big ice crystals form, and constant churning whips in air and keeps the crystals tiny, which is what gives you a smooth, soft scoop.

Making and serving it

Churn a sweetened yogurt base in an ice cream maker and you get soft-serve straight from the machine, the loose, swirlable texture of Buttermilk Custard Vanilla Frozen Yogurt.

Want it firmer? Pack it into a tub and freeze a few more hours.

Fruit and sauce do the rest. It is the cool base scooped into a Raspberry & Mango Sundae, or left to melt over a warm Ginger Apple Crisp.

Building the base on Greek yogurt gives a thicker, tangier result with more protein and less iciness, since the strained yogurt brings less water to freeze.

Buying and storing

Tubs vary a lot, so read the label. Low-fat and non-fat versions lean hard on sugar to stay smooth, so a "healthier" froyo can carry as much sugar as ice cream.

For the probiotic angle, check for live and active cultures. Freezing pauses the bacteria but plenty survive, though some commercial froyo is heat-treated and has none.

Keep it frozen at 0°F (-18°C) and press plastic wrap against the surface to block ice crystals and freezer burn. Homemade froyo has no stabilizers, so it freezes rock-hard; let it sit out ten minutes before scooping.

See yogurt for the cultured base it starts from.

Quick facts

In Chinese

冷冻酸奶

British (UK) term

Frozen yogurt

en français

yaourt glacé

en español

yogurt helado

Recipes using frozen yogurt

There are 10 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 10 recipes