Review: The Kefir Cookbook: An Ancient Healing Superfood for Modern Life, Recipes from My Family Table and Around the World

The Kefir Cookbook: An Ancient Healing Superfood for Modern Life, Recipes from My Family Table and Around the World by Julie Smolyansky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is Part 2 of today's food science and cookbook extravaganza!

Last year I reviewed a book on Probiotic Beverages by Felicity Evans about six weeks after I started making my own goat milk (different type of casein and lower lactose) kefir from scratch. Making kefir was easy. But staying on top of production at the consumption end, ah, that was a challenge. With only two of us in this house, adding kefir to recipes was a natural way to make sure we didn't waste any kefir. Enter this cookbook!

I have now tried a variety of recipes from this book, which is about as thorough a book on kefir as I can imagine. Smolyansky provides a huge array of recipes, from other ways to use your kefir (butter to cheese) to breakfast, baked goods, smoothies, salads, and dressings, in soups (in lieu of cream), small plates, entrees, and desserts. (YUM). Every recipe that I have tried (some have to be adapted for my gluten-free diet) was delicious and goat milk-kefir is one way that I can indulge in my butter chicken fantasy without having regular dairy. I use ghee on the rice and chicken but my kefir adds the right touch of creaminess. (I have to further adapt this recipe to be low FODMAP but it's doable and still yummy!

If you are looking for a great and affordable way to get a wide spectrum of probiotics in your diet, kefir is the way! And this book will teach you how to enrich your meals with those probiotics. A great find for those seeking to improve their gut microbiome.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss+ in exchange for an honest review.

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