Week 10: Yogurt

(March 6, 2011)

In an offhand comment, my mom recently asked me if I wanted her to bring anything for her weekend visit.  I couldn't think of anything, but she came up with the brilliant suggestion of her yogurt maker!  When I was little the only yogurt we ever had was homemade, usually with a dollop of homemade jam stirred in to make it sweet and fruity.  (Could this be where the "I could probably make that" spirit comes from?)

However, her yogurt craze ended sometime around the junior high mark for me, and I just assumed the old yogurt setup had been sold in the community garage sale or something.  Not so!  Just squirreled away in the (very full) closets of the basement! 

She even managed to find all of the little jars that go with it, so I could potentially make yogurt almost every other day - not that we'll be able to use that much yogurt...

How to make homemade  yogurt:

1 liter of milk (I used homo)
1/3 - 1/2 cup skim milk powder
some plain yogurt with live bacterial cultures (enough for a tablespoon in each jar
thermometer

1. Clean and sanitize jars.  I sanitized mine by pouring boiling water in there and leaving it for about 5 minutes.

2. Heat milk to 185 F.  Once the milk is warm, you can add the milk powder.  This helps to bump up the protein content, as well as thicken the yogurt.  I read that if you keep your milk at 185 for half an hour it will also help thicken your yogurt.  I love thick yogurt.  Make sure that the powder is all dissolved, or you'll get lumps.  (the warmth of the milk will help to dissolve it)

3. Cool milk to 110 F.  I put a bunch of cold water in the sink and put my pot in there to speed up the process.

4. While your milk is cooling, put about a tablespoon of yogurt into each container you'll be using.  Then once the milk reaches 110, pour it in while stirring to incorporate the yogurt throughout.

5. Place lids over containers and carefully set them in yogurt maker.  Be sure that this is in a space you don't mind giving up for the next 6-8 hours, because apparently the yogurt doesn't like to be disturbed.

6. Go over to grandma's for dinner, come home, watch a movie, go to bed late.  Next morning, your yogurt is made!  Put in the coldest part of your fridge - the back.

NOTES:

- If you want to use your own yogurt for the starter on the next batch, do so within a week
- It only takes 6-8 hours, and apparently the longer you leave it, the thicker and more tart it will be
- This yogurt maker is indeed "thriftee"...  my mom bought it over 20 years ago second hand, and it has been shared among the neighbours.  And it works like a hot damn!
- My batch turned out slightly lumpy.  I'm not sure why this happened, but I'm going to see if I can find a solution to this little issue.

*** You don't NEED any special equipment to make yogurt.  I've seen recipes where people use a thermos, a cooler with jugs of hot water, a heating pad, or a warming oven.  The key is that the milk is kept at a nice warm temperature and not disturbed for several hours. 

As a bonus, with all this yogurt hanging around you can use it for lots of different things!  My skin has been feeling crazy dry lately, so last night I whipped up a nice yogurt-cucumber-honey face mask.  Home spa time!