Its been a year and a half and I finally felt ready to brave the experiment again (Thanks for the inspiration, Evelyn at A Chaotic Lifestyle).
I'll skip the suspense to announce my final results, in a frenzy of caps lock excitement: THREE TIMES I'VE SUCCESSFULLY, MIRACULOUSLY turned milk to yogurt!
While the first re-trial came out more like Yop than Yogurt, which I froze as popsicles and no one knew the difference, the second and third were progressively more firm. I've Mother Earth News to thank for the instructions. Find the full article at Mother Earth News.
For the curious, I simplify the process below. If you decide to try it, reference the full article at MEN.
First, I melted 2 T of honey at bottom of pot to prevent milk scalding at the heat source. |
As the milk heated and cooled, I added a couple tablespoons of raspberry jam to the bottom of 2 of 3 clean, 500 ML jars. I kept one plain so I had starter for next time. |
The four and a half cups of milk produced the equivalent amount of yogurt: about a tub and a half of the standard 650 g worth about $5- 8 at the store. Homemade it cost me $1.25. After doing it three times, I feel pretty confident that I could do it regularly without much trouble-- most of the time it takes to make involves me sleeping, surfing the net, and working on other things in the kitchen.
Tonight, I'm happily calculating how many pairs of shoes and Lee Valley garden tools I can buy with my savings. As I do, I'm sucking a raspberry, yogurt popsicle that once was Yop, which before that was milk in my fridge.
6 comments:
Good for you! I also experienced some failures at the beginning, but now it seems like I've got the 'feel' for making yogurt. I've noticed that everyone develops their own system. I use a cooler with a hot water bottle inside to incubate mine. Just so glad I did not have to go buy another plug-in appliance to make this one food item.
That is great Carissa! Glad to hear it worked! Bet it tastes great too.
So would you say the taste is comparable to "regular yogurt?" We normally buy vanilla yogurt, but this raspberry jam business is interesting...
The way I've made it is not quite as sweet as the store bought stuff- but that could be remedied pretty quickly. I really like the flavour of it plain-- since I add honey in the beginning. I'd love to hear what you think if you try it!
Hey Carissa- glad you made it work! It's funny because I have no problem making yogurt and we do it regularly-without the crockpot or anything. I simply heat/cool/add starter and place the container in my oven with only the oven light on. It's the perfect temperature for growing culture. It takes as little as 5-6 hours but I usually do it overnight for 8 hours and end up with nice firm yogurt. (I always use whole milk, organic, and un-homogenized if available.) My neighbor can actually just leave hers on the counter and it works-no heat source at all! I think her house is warmer. But then when I tried to make yogurt at my mom's, it failed the first time and I couldn't figure out why. She uses heating blankets and it seems to work but never quite the same texture as mine. Fun stuff, isn't it? Courtney
It will be interesting if I find the thickening step faster once summer comes... Warm house should cut down the wait time (my fingers are crossed!
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