Homemade yoghurt
I’ve been making yoghurt for a couple of months now, and I’m still blown away by how easy and good it is! I got my recipe from searching Down to Earth.
Here’s what I do:
- Mix 1 1/4 cups of powdered milk into 750ml cold water. (Or just under a litre of any kind of milk; if powdered, mix according to recommended proportions and add an extra 1/4 cup of powder)
- Heat milk in a saucepan until it is really really about to boil over.
- While the milk is heating pour boiling water into the pot the yoghurt will set it, and its lid, to sterilize them. I’m using a kg pot left over from when I last bought yoghurt.
- Tip the water out, pour the milk in.
- Put on the lid and let the milk cool to only just warm; this takes an hour or more.
- Stir in three or so tablespoons of good fresh live-culture natural yoghurt.
- Put on the lid again, wrap the pot in a towel and leave it untouched in a warm place for about 12 hours.
- Voilà! Yum!
I’ve taken to making this while I am preparing dinner, then it sits by the fire overnight, and is ready in the morning. But I’ve also had success with putting the pot in an esky with some containers of boiling water. And yes, once you make one batch you can use it to make the next.
Yeehaw for homemade yoghurt! I love making one batch out of the last of the previous: chain yoghurt. I’d like to think that the cultures subtly mutate and change with each batch, and so the umpteenth batch of yoghurt will have acidophilus cultures slightly different to those in the very first. Makes me feel like I’m doing evolution in the kitchen. (I realise that not everyone may be comfortable with the discussion of culinary bacterial evolution over the breakfast table, but that’s not my problem.)
My big breakthrough in yoghurt-making, if one can have such a thing, was realising that I should put mine on to culture in the mornings/through the day rather than overnight. The house gets too cold for the bacteria to stay awake long enough to process the yoghurt and I am greeted, at breakfast, with a jar full of tepid, slightly suspicious milk rather than tangy yoghurt. If I put a batch on before lunchtime, on the other hand, I end up with yoghurt by bedtime. Which is perfect if I want to take yoghurt to bed.
Yes, culinary bacterial evolution discomfort is not my problem either, fortunately! I recently I started again with a greek style yoghurt and I’m really impressing myself (!) with how silky smooth and solid the texture is. So do you just put yours in the sun?
Mine goes in a de-pickled pickle jar, which I then pop into the yoghurt maker, which I then fill with boiling water. The yoghurt maker is essentially a wide-mouthed thermos, so it (theoretically) keeps the jar of yoghurt warm enough for long enough. I would like to do two batches in parallel, though: one in the yoghurt maker and one in the sun, and see which wins.
Yes, it would be interesting to see how they compared. I had an electric yoghurt maker many years ago, a kind of glorified thermos, but I never had success with it, which is partly why my new way seems to excitingly simple!