Got milk kefir and not sure how to use it? Here are 70+ ways & recipes to use it. Here are now 80+ ways to use milk kefir!

Some things you should know:

There are a lot of recipes around the internet for using the fermented milk product, kefir so I thought I would make a big list to help inspire you to use kefir and not get bored with using it, if it’s a part of your diet. The easiest way and tastiest way, to me, is to make kefir is in a smoothie or to serve kefir with berries.

Kefir can be used just about anywhere that buttermilk, yoghurt or cream cheese may be used. Other great ways to use kefir are:

  • In smoothies
  • To tenderize meat instead of yoghurt
  • Served with fruit
  • In a cold soup
  • In an ice cream recipe
  • Poured over cereal
  • Used instead of yoghurt to make
  • In a healthy milkshake recipe
  • As a leavening agent
  • In place of buttermilk in baking
  • As a starter for a sourdough recipe
  • To make a herbed cream cheese, or a fruit-flavoured cream cheese
  • To ferment grains or flours
  • To help dephytinize grains, cereals, nuts and seeds
  • In a salad dressing
  • In a pasta sauce
  • To make proboiotic drinks

Yesterday I showed you a simple and delicious recipe for milk kefir.

This milk kefir recipe was raspberry and lemon flavoureddelicious! I would recommend it as a great simple recipe for those new to kefir.

Pizza dough made with kefir:

Jaffa kefir (organic kefir with blood orange and chocolate!):

Purple kefir smoothie:

Now, below I present to you the largest list I could make of kefir recipes from around the web! If you know any great recipes I haven’t linked to please let me know and I’ll add it to the list (as long as it isn’t too similar to any listed recipe).

Please note: that even though these recipes contain kefir, other ingredients in the recipes may not be the healthiest, so use your best judgment and substitute for healthier ingredients where you can.

Big list of Kefir recipes:

  1. Homemade Organic Kefir with Raspberries & Lemon Zest (healthfoodlover.com)
  2. Raw Milk Kefir
  3. Vanilla Kefir Ice Cream 
  4. Kefir-Leban
  5. Kefir Cottage Cheese
  6. Gayle’s Passionfruit & Kefir Cheesecake
  7. Chocolate Zucchini Kefir Cake
  8. Lemon Kefir Ice Cream
  9. Lemon Yogurt Kefir Ice Box Pie & Sprouted Graham Crackers
  10. Kefir Coconut Ice Cream With Mango Soup
  11. Kefir Waldorf Salad
  12. Peanut Butter Kefir Pie
  13. Kefir Snowballs with Plum Filling
  14. Kefir Ccantaloupe
  15. Kefir Fruit Dip
  16. Coconut Milk Kefir
  17. Mediterranean Kefir Buns
  18. Milk-Free Kefir Sourdough Bread
  19. Kefir Flat Bread
  20. Pumpkin Cobbler Topping
  21. Kefir Scone Recipe
  22. Organic Kefir With Blood Oranges and Dark Chocolate (Jaffa Kefir)
  23. Pumpkin Cookies
  24. Quick Kefir Sourdough Bread
  25. Whole Wheat Kefir Pancakes with Bluberry Sauce
  26. Calcium Rich Kefir Cocktail & Garden Salad Kefir Lunch Express
  27. Wings Of Life Bread
  28. Kefir Bread Spread; Kefir Cocktails; Kefir Rolls; Kefir Bread; Kefir Strawberry Dessert
  29. Kefir Cheese
  30. Chocolate Kefir Power Smoothie
  31. Maple Rose Kefir
  32. Kefir-Kraut
  33. Okroshka (Cold Russian Summer Soup)
  34. Lemon Kefir Cake with Lemon Ginger Marmalade
  35. Kefir Croutons
  36. Kefir Ice Cream Sandwiches
  37. Strawberry Lemon Kefir Smoothie
  38. Chai Kefir Parfait 
  39. Strawberry Kefir Lemon Pie
  40. Apple Kefir Breakfast
  41. Kefir Claus
  42. The Butterfly
  43. Kefir & Fruit Cilantro Salad
  44. The Water Butterfly
  45. Kefir Charmer
  46. Herbal Kefir Liver Blush
  47. Yorkshire Curd Tart or Cheese Cake
  48. Fluffy Kefir Pancakes
  49. Kefir Cream Pudding
  50. Dairy-Free Kefir Ice Cream with Mixed Berries, No Ice Cream-Maker Required
  51. Chocolate Kefir Smoothie
  52. Kefir Smoothie: Frozen Summer Fruit Delish!
  53. Tricolored Berry & Kefir Popsicles for July 4th
  54. Kefir Cheese Cake Recipe
  55. Lemon Kefir Soup
  56. Em’s Spring Green Kefir Soup
  57. Sweetheart Cookies With Kefir
  58. Creamy Kefir Salad Dressing or Fake “RANCH”
  59. Cold Avocado and Kefir Soup
  60. Buttermilk Kefir Chicken
  61. Raw Kefir Cheesecake
  62. Coconut Kefir Cookie
  63. Kefir Preserving Brine
  64. Cucumber Yoghurt or Kefir Salad
  65. Kefir Custard Fruit Tart
  66. Super Green Kefir Smoothie
  67. Kefir Poppy Seed Dressing
  68. Apricot Mint Dessert
  69. Cinnamon Basil Grape Soda
  70. Probiotic Potato Salad
  71. Fermented Cranberry-Orange-Apple Relish
  72. Blackberry Kefir Smoothie
  73. Quinoa Kefir Berry Cookies
  74. Turkey Waldorf Salad with Raw Kefir (Video)
  75. Kefir Morning Smoothie
  76. Cabbage-Kefir Stuffed Potatoes
  77. Kefir Butter
  78. Parsley Mayo
  79. Iced Koffuca Latte
  80. Sour Cream/Kefir Raisin Bars
  81. Apple Pie Kefir Ice Cream
  82. Kefir Klaus
  83. Unique and Yummy Kefir Drink
  84. Sprouted Strawberry Scones with Lemon Kefir Yogurt Topping
  85. Lemon Kefir Smoothie
  86. Russian Kefir Pancakes (Oladi) Recipe
  87. Pumpkin Polenta with Kefir-Honey-Walnut Sauce
  88. Organic Kefir with Blood Orange and Dark Chocolate

Using Kefir Topically:

  1. Kefir Face Mask
  2. Latta Russian Kefir Mask

 

Michelle

Health Food Lover is Michelle Robson-Garth. Michelle is a degree-qualified Naturopath (BHSc) and Massage Therapist. She is also a passionate writer, recipe-creator and all-round foodie from Melbourne, Australia. © Copyright: 2009-2012 Michelle Robson-Garth. Please ask permission first when using any text or images on healthfoodlover.com. Read the disclaimer here. Have a look at the recipe index for more health food lovin’ recipes. Join the Facebook page & follow Health Food Lover on twitter.

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{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }

Julia July 12, 2011 at 6:06 pm

Hello Michelle,

Thank you for featuring EnjoyYourCooking recipe in your post!

If you are looking for more recipes which use kefir, this Cold Borscht is one of my favorites:
http://www.enjoyyourcooking.com/soup-recipes/lithuanian-cold-borscht.html

Very refreshing for hot summer weather.

Reply

Pleasant November 19, 2011 at 12:50 pm

thank u sooooo much for compiling these kefir recipes…ur awesome! xo

Reply

Michelle November 20, 2011 at 7:07 am

No worries! Glad you like them!

Reply

Imegahan December 21, 2011 at 10:28 am

Another adoring fan says THANKS for this informative compilation!

Reply

Michelle April 6, 2012 at 12:53 pm

No worries! Thanks for stopping by :)

Reply

Erin September 16, 2012 at 9:57 am

Thank you so much for posting these!!! :)

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Michelle September 16, 2012 at 10:05 pm

No worries, Erin!

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Erika January 3, 2013 at 4:53 pm

I’m sorry to say that none of the links are working :(

Reply

Michelle January 3, 2013 at 7:32 pm

Hmm they seem to be working on my end? Are you able to tell me which links specifically? Thanks for letting me know!

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Carrie June 6, 2013 at 4:11 pm

The links that came originally from the blog “Cultured Food For Life” are not working.

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Nancy January 16, 2013 at 12:34 pm

Since kefir grain have yeast in them is it O K for someone with yeast issues (yeast infections) to consume kefir?

Reply

Radena Winsbury January 5, 2019 at 9:42 am

The yeast you are referring to is candida. “Kefir is a fermented drink that is one of nature’s finest probiotics. You should consider making it a part of your anti-Candida treatment, along with a course of good commercial probiotics. … If you want to beat your Candida overgrowth for good, kefir is a great way to keep your gut flora in balance for years to come.”

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narf7 March 16, 2013 at 8:39 pm

I agree with Erika, the majority of these links are not working. We get this error message…

DNS Resolution Error

You’ve requested a page on a website (blog.culturedfoodlife.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, CloudFlare is currently unable to resolve your requested domain (blog.culturedfoodlife.com). There are two potential causes of this:

Most likely: if the owner just signed up for CloudFlare it can take a few minutes for the website’s information to be distributed to our global network. Check back in about 5 minutes and the site should be up and running and enjoying all the benefits of CloudFlare.


Less likely: something is wrong with this site’s configuration. Usually this happens when accounts have been signed up with a partner organization (e.g., a hosting provider) and the provider’s DNS fails.


Timestamp: Sat, 16 Mar 2013 02:38:31 -0700


Your IP address: 123.2.50.217


Requested URL: blog.culturedfoodlife.com/2010/12/21/kefir-claus.aspx


Error reference number: 1001


Server ID: FL_26F2


Process ID: PID_5007893a58004bc


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)

About half of your links are affected :(

Reply

richmeister July 12, 2013 at 7:12 pm

Ive been using semi skimmed milk for making kefir and the consistency just looked wrong, then I found this video on youtube…..its worth checking out…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIGLKa0O46I ………….

I have two questions that I’m hoping one of you guys can answer….

1) Its said that you can’t introduce metal spoons or cutlery when making kefir, but, is it ok to put kefir milk in a blender because the blender has metal sharp bits in the bottom. Is it ok to do this?
and
2) Can you use the milk in hot tea or coffee?

Reply

Michelle July 13, 2013 at 9:03 pm

Hi Rich.
Thanks for sharing the video, I’ll check it out!

As for your questions:
1) I honestly don’t have a problem with using metal spoons or cutlery with kefir. Though I think there may be a risk if using a wire strainer with kefir as there is the potential to physically damage the kefir grains, however that is only if you really push the grains against the strainer.
3) You can definitely use the kefired milk in hot tea or coffee, however this will decrease the live bacteria although the milk will definitely be a nutritious alternative compared to regular dairy milk.

I hope that helps.

Michelle.

Reply

jan quick September 14, 2013 at 2:18 am

My Sprouts has kefir BOGO this week and was trying to decide if I could use 2 bottles since I am the only one that uses it. Yes and yes after reading your very appreciated recipes. Could I freeze the kefir? I freeze milk all the time but was not sure about the kefir. Thanks again for the recipes.

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Michelle September 20, 2013 at 8:45 am

Yes you can separate the kefir into two different bottles. And yes you can freeze the kefir. :-)

Reply

Giselle Cooper February 18, 2015 at 5:10 pm

Good day to you!

My name is Giselle, and I’ve been following your website for quite some time now. I love your post about kefir, as I’m a big fan of the stuff. Currently, I’m working on a blog called Your Kefir Source, which serves as a guide on all things related to kefir. I think I have something that will be a good fit for your site, as well as useful to your readers, and for that, I’d like to reach out:

http://www.yourkefirsource.com/kefir-recipes/

It’s all about how you can prepare and enjoy kefir at home. Hope you enjoy trying out these recipes as much as I did. What do you think? :)

Giselle

Reply

Pam March 22, 2015 at 1:26 pm

I have been using milk kefir on my morning porridge but I understand heal kills the good bacteia. I notice you also have recipes for baked goods. Can you please explain.

Reply

Michelle March 24, 2015 at 11:09 am

Hi Pam.

Yes it does kill the bacteria, however kefir in itself is a still nutritious addition to baked goods.

Thanks for your question.

Michelle.

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anna April 21, 2015 at 3:04 am

I was wondering if using balsamic vinegar in a recipe with kefir will kill the bacteria?

Reply

Kathleen M Smith April 29, 2015 at 4:28 pm

Thanks for the post, it is so convenient and such a time saver to have all the info and links in one place. Just got my first milk kefir grains in the mail today. I have made my own yogurt for awhile and just discovered that kefir has more good strains and seems easier, am so excited to try it!

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katie May 1, 2015 at 12:55 am

Michelle,
Thank you for sharing my link in your post!
Kefir grains can often be found on Craig’s list.
They are quite abundant and very hardy!
I still have my culture after 6+ years. I highly recommend you make your own fermented/ cultured products. Most store bought brands will include gums, stabilizers, and preservatives in order to extend the shelf life.
Have a great day!
Katie

Reply

Lena June 28, 2015 at 3:02 am

Can I use a nutribullet to make the sour cream and butter? I’m not sure what an s blade is. Thanks!

Reply

Michelle June 29, 2015 at 10:51 am

Hi Lena,

Yes you can! Please let me know how you go!

Thanks,
Michelle.

Reply

kelsey May 26, 2016 at 12:27 pm

I have the strawberry one and this my first time trying is there anyway I can use it to tast good I dont want to waste it so can u give me options please

Reply

rika asterina October 24, 2016 at 12:36 am

can i use kefir to make a lolipop ? thanks and hope you repeat my massage :)

hello from indonesia :D

Reply

rika asterina October 24, 2016 at 12:37 am

#reply not repeat sorry

Reply

Michelle March 11, 2017 at 3:21 pm

Hi Rika.

You can definitely give it a go :).

Hello from Australia :).

Reply

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