So, it turns out you weren’t all lying when you said a person could make their own yogurt, even without a machine. It’s one of those things, like growing plants from seed, that seems unlikely. You’re fairly sure the world hasn’t come up with an elaborate lie to trick you, but you can’t quite believe it until you try it yourself.
I followed the instructions at that link I posted the other day, and, well, it mostly worked. I’ve got more yogurt now than I started with, so I guess that counts as a success. I used a quart of skim milk and 100g of the plain yogurt that I was about to run out of (by the way, 100g of yogurt is NOT 3 Tbsp, as the instructions say — not three of my Tbsp, anyway), I put it in a warm oven before I went to bed, and eight hours later, I took it out and peered at it.
It was yogurt, but not spoonable yogurt. More like a yogurt drink. As per the instructions, I heated the oven again and stuck it back in, this time for four hours. When I took it out, the whey had separated! I wound up having to strain it through a cloth, which resulted in the perfect yogurt consistency, but only about half a quart.
It tastes lovely, exactly the same as the yogurt I started with, but it cost roughly $3 for 550g. For another fifty cents, I can just buy about 650g of locally made yogurt. Without all the mess (of which there wound up being a lot). Maybe it was just because I used skimmed milk that it wasn’t thick enough after eight hours, although I don’t know why it split during its second round in the oven (maybe the oven hadn’t cooled down enough?). If I had wound up with a full quart of yogurt, I would do this again and again without thinking twice, but as it is. . . I’ll wait until I can get a yogurt maker to control the temperature and time.
Today! I went to the farmers market! Which is pretty much the most exciting part of my week! Here’s a photo of part of my haul, soon to be uploaded for the ten euro group on flickr. The two little plants are loofah gourds — I’m hoping we’ll have enough hot weather for them to grow me a big basket of loofahs.
That’s a really, nearly, not quite local meal. The tofu ruins it. I had a salad with spinach from the farmers market and lettuce and chard from my garden. I’ve been eating all my chard raw this year, since I’ve been feeling much more salad-y and less steamed-greens-y. I threw some asparagus into my salad, along with green onion and the dill balsamic dressing I made the other day. I bought a small container of jalapeno pickles from the market today, and I really like them. Although one bite = not very hot; one pickle = runny nose. Ah! Good for the sinuses.
Thanks for all the great comments on yesterday’s post. While I think it’s become highly acceptable to talk about certain body image issues (which just perpetuates the issues, in a lot of cases) and eating habits (either the latest fad diet or the extreme habits of others), there’s definitely a lack of discussion in certain, more realistic (and problematic) areas. So I’m glad you appreciated my ramblings.
I suspect with experience your yogurt yield will improve. You might have to work on keeping the temperature more constant during the incubation period, maybe with a heating pad or a light bulb. Or maybe even a thermos bottle. The Hillbilly Housewife has some suggestions on keeping the temp constant here: http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/yogurt.htm
You do know you can make your own tofu, right? I made some for the first time this week (with local soybeans!) and had a similar experience to your yogurt one. It worked, but there wasn’t a lot of tofu, and the texture wasn’t exactly right. Still, local tofu! (Except the coagulant is from Japan. Oh well.) I’m going to keep trying to make the texture better.
My yoghurt always turned out watery as well until I read somewhere a trick of adding powdered milk to the regular milk. I can’t remember how much, but I did a quick check online and it looks as though there are different recommendations depending on how firm you want your yoghurt to be
Thanks, Debbie and Donna! I think I WILL try making it again, with some added milk powder and a different method of keeping it warm.
Hi Anna,
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I do not want to sound snobbish but you know in most Indian households in the USA and back in India, yogurt is still very much made at home.
we just warm milk(no powdered milk is necessary) and when it is luke warm just add in 1-2 spoons of yogurt from the previous culture.
if you do not have any you can just add the dannon plain yogurt that is available.
you can just leave it out( I mean not in the refridgerator) for about 24 hours and your yogurt should be ready
let me know if you have any questions…cheers
I store my yogurt in a cooler overnight. Fill a couple of large canning jars with boiling water, set the jars in the cooler with your yogurt, wrap it all with an old towel and close the cooler lid. I’ve found that a longer incubation time (12 hours or so) gives me thicker yogurt. Good luck!