TZATZIKI recipe - functional/nutritional explanation
More details and idiot-proofing the further down you read, so if you know what you're doing in the kitchen feel free to skim as you get further down.
So what most people know as tzatziki sauce is actually supposed to be a... salad I guess you could call it. It's yogurt and cucmbers mixed together and spiced that you eat straight/with bread as a meal or as a significant portion of a meal (yes, yogurt is a meal, it has plenty of protein. Ditto cheese. I've had people mock my meals like this, but this is a common thing with Near-Eastern style food).
The dish spans continents and has plenty of similar names. In my parents' Farsi it's jajeek, in Armenian it may be known as yalanchi, in Arabic it's jalajeek, to Greeks it's tzatziki. Even India has it but known as Raita but a bit more different than the other recipes.
I don't provide measurements because I don't think it's necessary here or for most of practical cooking. I trust the reader won't spastically add a solid handful of salt or 2 cups of oil to one tub of yogurt. Outside of that, everything is to taste. Only thing I'd say is 2 to 4 cloves of garlic for your typical 32 ounce tub of yogurt is already pretty garlicky... I believe, I haven't made this in a while. The garlic flavor will be stronger the next day as the yogurt absorbs the flavor of the garlic.
So the tl;dr version for people who are very versed in cooking is that it's any kind of unflavored yogurt seasoned with garlic and dried mint or dried oregano and a bit of extra salt. Use only the dried herb. Crush/mince the garlic with the salt and let it sit for a bit to draw out and mellow the flavor; I've read some people soak the garlic in lemon juice to do this, but I can't vouch for that method. I feel like using mainly oregano as the herb could go well with a small pinch of mint, but if you're using mainly mint I wouldn't use oregano, I don't think those flavors mix well in large amounts. Other commonly included ingredients are olive oil, lemon juice, and white pepper. It will last a lot longer if you keep it as a yogurt mix and scoop out some and mix with cucumbers separately when you want to have the salad. Adding a little olive oil if you want it won't make the yogurt break/separate. Nor should lemon juice, even with 2% yogurt, as long as you don't add too much. Lemon might make it more grainy if you use 1.5% non-greek but it's not the end of the world (there's a note below if you don't know what I'm talking about).
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To add a little more analysis for people who need it:
Feel free to use whatever kind of yogurt you like for nutritional purposes, but the most traditional and best flavor and texture for this use is just plain whole milk yogurt, non-greek style. Greek yogurt is fine if you want that extra protein, but it doesn't mix as well and doesn't carry the flavor as well and isn't as savory as regular yogurt (I think the comparatively extra water of regular yogurt helps carry the umami/salt flavor better). 2% yogurt is also OK to cut back calories, but obviously it won't taste as good. Using olive oil (NOT extra virgin, see below) if you're using 2% yogurt may be a good idea to replace some of the fat that would otherwise be there and bring in more flavor. Nutritionally this would be healthier according to some people's opinions because you'd be taking some of the butterfat you'd be having with whole milk and replacing it with olive oil fat, which is heart healthier. But remember, fat is fat and OVEDRdoing it has the same fattening and heart-health effects regardless of the kind of fat.
You shouldn't be using extra virgin olive oil for this because it's too strong and bitter. In general I find extra virgin olive oil isn't really suitable for most cooking for this same reason, only for bread dipping and maybe some salad dressings.
You shouldn't be using fat-free yogurt for this because there isn't sufficient flavor. In fact, you shouldn't be using fat-free yogurt for anything you're going to eat because the tastiness/healthiness ratio is just way too low to justify it. 1.5% yogurt saves on enough calories while still tasting decent.
The stuff below gets into idiot-proofing. Each paragraph is one topic, so if you know about the caveat within the first sentence, you can skip the paragraph:
The mention above about the yogurt becoming grainy if you add lemon juice, if you do not understand, is that lemon juice curdles dairy products. Fats, starches, and proteins prevent this process from occuring, so a higher-fat yogurt will be less likely to curdle. If the yogurt does curdle a bit which may happen with 1.5%
When I say crush/mince the garlic with salt, I mean that the resultant paste/particles should be mixed with salt. I usually just add a pinch into the garlic-crusher I use so the garlic comes out already mixed with salt. The salt will draw out the moisture from the garlic, which carries a lot of flavor, but will also help mellow it out by exposing it to the air (again, let it sit for a bit, however long is practical. Even 5 minutes will do. If you don't want to wait don't, just do this step first and let it sit for as long as it takes you to do everything else). If you don't have a garlic-crusher, I recommend investing in a good one, since adding garlic and lots of it is essential to good cooking and something you'll be doing often.
And while I'm still adding stuff to make this recipe idiot-proof, let me mention that your cucumbers should be peeled and chopped medium to small. No exact size, just how you like it.
Yogurt by itself lasts a damn long time in the fridge, like six weeks, and the added salt here may make it last longer.
If you don't understand what I'm referring to when I keep mentioning 2% or 1.5% yogurt, it's referring to the fat content. They make low-fat yogurts by removing some of the fat, which cuts backs on calories and makes the yogurt healthier generally speaking. The yogurt that is not in any way low fat may be marked as "whole milk" yogurt. 2%, 1.5%, and 1% yogurts have less and less fat respectively. 0% yogurt may be marked as "fat-free" yogurt or "skim-milk" yogurt.
White pepper is like black pepper, but without that outer black coating. It's the sharp bite of pepper, but none of the aroma, a much simpler, lighter flavor but still a lot of bite. You should buy it pre-ground in the spice aisle (which is usually in the baking aisle). One good thing about it is it never relly gets old, since it's all bite and no aroma, there's no aroma to slowly volatilize off and it will always have that bite.
And of course, you can use it as a sauce for gyros. Obviously cut the cucumbers very small in that case.
And one last ancillary note:
There are people who add soaked raisins and walnuts in there, but I really don't like it that way. This dish should be all savory no sweet, though the texture of the nuts some people may like (just soak raw dried walnuts in lightly salted water overnight. This is also a traditional Persian way of eating walnuts in general).
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DOOGH / TAHN / AYRAN recipe - YOGURT DRINK recipe - functional explanation
This is a yogurt-based drink that goes by a lot of different names in a lot of different countries, again all in the Near-East. You can even buy it pre-made and bottled at middle eastern shops, though it's not nearly as good as home made and it's an easy recipe. And yes, they bottle yogurt-based sodas, weird, I know. The white yogurt part eventually settles to the bottom and you have to mix it up a lot of the time right before you consume it.
Basically you mix regular, unflavored, whole-milk yogurt into water with some salt, and stir it up to mix it. Usually you add some dried mint. It should be noticeably salty, but not crazy salty like let's say a V8. Enough to bring out a strong salty savory flavor. It should be fully liquid and pourable, obviously thicker than water, but still full-on beverage-level pourability. Can put ice in the glass to keep cold, is fine.
You might be able to get away with 2% yogurt, but I wouldn't go any lower than that in fat content, you need them fat for flavor and already this is a drink that's thinned out with water. And don't use Greek yogurt as it's like stepping backward to step forward - Greek yogurt is just yogurt with a lot of the water removed, when in this recipe you're adding water anyway. Maybe in theory you could make more of the drink with one tub of Greek yogurt since it's more concentrated and you could just add more water? But I wouldn't try it, Greek yogurt tastes a bit different.
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