posted
I made yoghurt today - just for the heck of it - and, without having a thermometer or any special equipment of any kind, it worked! Yay!!!!!
You're probably wondering why I would bother making yoghurt here if it's available in the stores.
Well, it is available, but the common varieties of yoghurt that we can get here are either made with gelatin as a thickener, or gelatine with some yoghurt culture. Yoghurt made with just the culture to thicken it is not common here. I only found a 1/4 cup package of it made that way, nothing larger. And the way I go through the stuff, it's far too expensive and wasteful as far as packaging goes.
And yes, there is a difference between yoghurt made with gelatin vs. made with the proper bacteria.
So I decided to make my own. And it worked! Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Yeah, I plan on making paneer sometime. I have a few recipes that call for it.
It's amazingly easy to make yoghurt - shockingly so. There are fancy ways and not so fancy ways, and since I have no special equipment of any kind - not even a thermometer - I went the not so fancy way.
DIRECTIONS:
Heat milk slowly in a saucepan until it reaches 185F (85C). If you don't have a thermometer, heat the milk until bubbles begin to appear around the edges of the pan. (be careful to keep stirring the milk or it will burn on the bottom and make a crust) Cool the milk until it is down to 110F (45C), or lukewarm.
Put the yoghurt in a small bowl (about 1/4 cup for a gallon of milk, or 2 Tbs for 4 cups of milk) and stir until it is soft. stir in about 1/2 cup of warm milk with yoghurt until it is all mixed well. Add this yoghurt mixture to the saucepan with the rest of the milk, stirring SLOWLY, or it will become sour or tart.
Rinse the bowl you are using with hot water and then pour in the yoghurt/milk mixture. Put on the lid firmly and then wrap the bowl in at least two layers of bath towels to keep the heat in. Set the towel covered bowl aside for at least 6 hours, usually overnight. Afterwards, store the yoghurt in the refigerator. -----
Mine was set, although not spectacularly so, after 6 hours. I'm leaving it for another hour to see if that will make a difference. Another website I went to, though, said not to leave it to set too long as it could become sour.
If you want it sweetened, add sugar/sweetener when you're ready to eat it. And use this yoghurt to provide the culture for the next batch, and so on and so forth. But get a new culture - from the grocery store - every three months to make sure you don't get an imbalance of the wrong type of cultures happenin'.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Your recipe doesn't really make clear what you are using for starter.
My mother always made yogurt, since I was a little girl, without the benefit of any special equipment. We have always used it in our food, not sweetened.
[ January 24, 2005, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: Ela ]
Posts: 5771 | Registered: Nov 2000
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Sorry. For starter, I used yoghurt that had bacteria culture but no gelatin added. No sugar added, no fruit added. Just plain unsweetened yoghurt.
I think the reason my mother used a heating pad for the yoghurt was because we lived in Canada, and it was usually very cold wherever we lived. Although I could be wrong. It could just have been the type of recipe she had and she didn't know it could be made any other way. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I used to make yogurt, but you have to keep it going, so eventually I stopped. You can only eat just so much yogurt.
Some tricks I used for temperature:
When you are allowing it to cool, if you can't keep your fingertip in the liquid for 10 seconds, it's too hot. I mixed the starter in as soon as I could keep my finger in for ten seconds.
I put my mixture in an insulated ice bucket, but it would still get below active temperature before it was done. So I turned on the oven for about a minute, to get it warm (You have to figure it out on your own, since your oven will be different) and then turned on the light inside the oven. Kinda like a Kenner Easy Bake oven used a lightbulb for a heat source. It kept the temperature just about right for a good long time.
Today I'd just use my warming drawer though! If it gets too cold I don't think it works very well to try to bring it back up to temperature.
I just used regular Columbo unflavored yogurt as a starter.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Thanks for the tip about putting your finger in it. That will help a lot since I was having problems gauging the temperature correctly.
The warming oven/drawer is likely not at all necessary for me here where outside temperatures are almost always between 28-33 Celsius every single stinkin' day. I wrapped my yoghurt in towls and at the end of six hours, I could still feel the heat in the towels from the yoghurt, so I think it was probably fine.
I also found that it was set even more this morning after I took it out of the fridge, so it's all fine. It had the right texture and firmness for me.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The best yogurt I ever had was in Iceland. They served it at breakfast in our hotel every morning. I would eat bowls of it with the little croissant-like pastries (and also fish and cheese - we had to eat a big breakfast there b/c it was so cold and we did a lot of strenuous, outdoor activities). It was strawberry and it didn't taste anything like American yogurt, which I haven't been able to eat since. Even the yogurt I got in the European market back in Richmond couldn't compare.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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