How to Make Lassi: Sweet, Salted and Mango

Your lassi is thin, a bit sour, and the sugar sits in the bottom of the glass. That is the usual failure, and it comes from three small choices: which yogurt, how cold, and how long you blend. This guide covers how to make lassi in the sweet and salted versions, using the amounts from our own recipes.

The base: yogurt, a little milk, and a hard blend

Our lassi recipe serves 2 and uses:

• 400 g (1 3/4 cups) yogurt
• 100 ml (0.4 cup) milk, optional
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 2 cardamom pods, crushed, optional

Put everything in a blender and run it on high for about 60 seconds, until the mixture is smooth, light and frothy. Taste, and blend in more sugar only if you want it sweeter. Then chill it for an hour (the recipe timer is 3600 seconds) and pour it over ice.

The recipe's own tip on yogurt is clear: use full-fat for the thickest drink. Low-fat yogurt gives a thinner lassi, and no amount of blending fixes that.

Sweet or salted: pick a side

The Punjabi habit is to pick one direction. Our recipe notes mention the salty version as "Punjab's other favourite": skip the sugar and cardamom, blend the yogurt with water, salt and roasted cumin powder, and garnish with mint.

There is no sweet-salty hybrid in our library, and the doi ghol recipe says why: "Make it sweet or salty, never both". The drink tastes more refreshing when it commits.

For the salted side, our library has two close relatives with exact amounts:

Neither is the same drink as Punjabi salted lassi, and we did not write a separate recipe for it. If you want it, use the doi ghol amounts as your starting point: 400 g yogurt, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp roasted cumin, then add cold water in splashes until it pours. Taste after each splash. The mint from the laban recipe is a good garnish.

Roast the cumin yourself

Pre-ground cumin works, but roasted cumin is what gives salted lassi its smoky depth. Warm the whole seeds in a dry pan for under a minute, until fragrant, then crush them. Do this just before you blend. If you keep a jar of ground cumin around, our spice box guide has notes on keeping whole spices and grinding small batches.

Mango lassi, with one rule

Our mango lassi is the sweet base with fruit: 300 g (1 1/4 cups) yogurt, 100 ml (0.4 cup) milk, 2 tbsp sugar, a quarter teaspoon of cardamom, and about 1 1/2 cups of ripe mango pulp. The one rule is to taste the mango before you add sugar. Very ripe mango is already sweet, so you may need less than the 2 tablespoons. If the drink is too thick, add milk a splash at a time.

Use well-chilled yogurt and mango, or add a few ice cubes while blending. Our recipe notes say that gives the best texture.

Scaling it up for a crowd

The base recipe makes two tall glasses, so for a jug of six, triple everything: 1.2 kg (5 1/4 cups) yogurt, 300 ml (1 1/4 cups) milk and 9 tablespoons of sugar. Blend in two batches, because a full blender jug will not whip the yogurt properly and the froth is the point. Chill the batches together in one jug, stir, and add ice at the table so it stays thick. Taste the sugar after tripling, since the quantity that suits two glasses can read as too sweet in six.

The milk is optional in the recipe. Leave it out for a thicker, tangier drink, and add it if your yogurt is very sharp. Cardamom is optional too, and it is the only spice in the sweet version, so use fresh pods and crush them just before blending.

Fixes for a bad glass

• Watery: low-fat yogurt, or too much milk or water. Blend in another few tablespoons of full-fat yogurt to thicken it.
• Sour: the yogurt was already past its best, or it is naturally tart. Add a little more sugar for the sweet version. For the salted version, a pinch more salt rounds the tartness.
• Gritty: sugar did not dissolve. Blend longer, or dissolve the sugar in the milk first.
• Not cold enough: the recipe's shortcut is to blend a handful of ice cubes in rather than waiting an hour in the fridge. It dilutes the drink slightly, so reduce the milk.
• Foam collapses: drink it soon. The frothy texture is at its best straight after blending.

What to serve it with

Sweet lassi is the drink people reach for at weddings and dhabas, according to our recipe description. Salted lassi suits a heavy, spicy meal, since the cold yogurt takes the edge off the heat. A plate of aloo paratha works with either. Serve it cold, and keep sweet and salty in separate glasses.

If you are not sure what you can make with the yogurt in your fridge, the pantry planner at degchi.matrixinn.net/#try suggests dishes from the ingredients you already have.

Your five-minute lassi checklist

1. Full-fat yogurt, cold from the fridge.
2. Choose sweet or salted before you start.
3. Blend 60 seconds, not 10.
4. Taste, then adjust, then chill.
5. Add ice only at the end.