Dill Pickle Greek Yogurt Dip

Don’t get me wrong, I like mayo. It’s glorious on hot dogs, hamburgers, and in my egg salad.

With cut-up vegetables, or *gasp* pork rinds, not so much. I think it is the dark eggy-ness of it. When I eat it on things with a lot of freshness or flavor pop, it just seems to take over everything and drag it down.

For someone on a low carb diet who goes to great lengths to eliminate all added sugar in his diet, it is also problematic as there are some brands with a fair amount of added sugar. This is despite sometimes showing zero sugar on the label nutrition breakdown, which exploits a loophole in labeling laws that lets manufacturers show zero if the amount is small enough.

That’s easily enough done if you keep the recommended serving size vanishingly small. I can’t remember ever using an amount of mayo that approached a tablespoon on a burger. I think we all know what is going on there.

I also don’t love the inflammatory processed seed oils in commercial mayonnaise. I have a family heart disease history, and so I make efforts to eschew them whenever possible.

The solution to all this for me is yogurt. Yes, yogurt. The stuff you used to eat with fruit on the bottom that was packed with added sugar.

There is still some residual milk sugar that is not fermented away in the yogurt-making process, but in this case, you are not eating a whole cup of it, so it is tolerable. Also, it’s part of the milk being used to make the yogurt and not being added after the fact to achieve the “bliss point” that makes so much processed food irresistable. That makes it conform better with my own personal “whole foods” philosophy of low carb eating. It also has a good punch of protein and calcium, which can be difficult to get enough of on a ketogenic/low carb diet.

Do me a favor and try to set aside your past experiences of basically having yogurt as “dessert for breakfast”, and enjoy it in its more savory incarnation like you would mayonnaise or sour cream. It’s definitely not the last time savory yogurt will make an appearance here. Many of the recipes I’ve developed to bring some variety to my diet while keeping my carbs down borrow heavily from ethnic cuisines around the world, where savory yogurt isn’t always such an oddity.

UPDATE: Since sharing this recipe on social media, I’ve gotten a lot of suggestions from people on ways to modify the recipe to personal preferences. The best one is to replace part or all of the yogurt with sour cream, especially if you want more fat. I haven’t tried it yet (I will!), but I am certain that you could make that substitution 1:1 without changing anything else. (h/t: Suzy Q Smith @ Keto Foodies United)

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Dill Pickle Greek Yogurt Dip

Greek yogurt is a food that is secretly keto-friendly due to the fact that milk sugars have been largely fermented away. It stands in for mayo in this dip, yielding a dip that is fresher and brighter than the heavy egg taste of mayo-based dips.

Course Snack Food

Cuisine American, Deep South, Keto, Low Carb, Paleo, Southwest

Prep Time 15 minutes

Total Time 15 minutes

Servings 1 cups

Ingredients

• 1 cup whole milk greek yogurt
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 2 tablespoons dill relish
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp black pepper
• milk or buttermilk

Recipe Notes

As I already stated, be sure to read the label of your dill relish. Most are ok, but you always run the risk of sugar being snuck in on you when you veer into "processed food land".