CincyEats

Over the last few years Meg and I have gradually been replacing the factory processed foods in our pantry and fridge with homemade alternatives.  Of course we sometimes still use canned tomato sauce or a box of chicken stock but when reasonable we try to make our own.  Our latest two projects have been beans and yoghurt.  (Keep an eye out for the post on beans).

For some background on why we attempted to make yoghurt:  I eat yoghurt every day for breakfast.  Besides supplying calcium in my diet I like the way it tastes.  I rarely eat sweets so I prefer plain or greek yogurt to the  artificially sweetened flavored yogurts available at the supermarket.   The organic yoghurt at the grocery is not locally produced.  The only local yoghurt option I’ve been able to find  is from Dean’s Mediterranean Imports, a thick, custardy, greek version which is absolutely delicious.  Even though we have a local option I still wanted to try to make our own so that we know how  and I think this will be the first step toward making our own cheese.

Making yoghurt is actually quite simple.  In a nutshell you:

1. Heat milk in a double boiler (to prevent scorching) to 185 degrees
2. While milk is heating, bring 2-4 tablespoons of plain yoghurt to room temperature
3. Cool the milk to 110 degrees
4. Stir in room temp yoghurt
5. Pour into storage containers and maintain temp between 100 and 110 degrees for 5-7 hours (The longer it stays at temp, the thicker the yoghurt will be)
6. Store containers in the fridge, this should keep for up to 2 weeks

The idea is to kill any bad bacteria in the milk, add the good bacteria (yoghurt), and maintain the temp the bacteria needs in order to turn milk into yoghurt.  There several methods for maintaining the temp like heating pads or an oven with a pilot light.  I filled a cooler with water at 115 degrees and placed the containers inside.

The result is delicious.  The character of the milk stands out far beyond any supermarket yoghurt I’ve had.  The first batch was thinner than normal, probably because the cooler method for maintaining temp is not the best choice for our drafty home in the wintertime.   I plan on trying to make yoghurt every couple of weeks, we’ll see how it goes.  For any recipe that requires milk or cream there is no substitute for Snowville Creamery’s wonderful organic milk.  Whether we’re making butter, ice cream, alfredo or yoghurt this is the only milk we use in our kitchen.

If you’d like some additional detail on yoghurt making, these are the two recipes I used for inspiration:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Yogurt
http://www.allfreecrafts.com/giftinajar/homemade-yogurt.shtml