I bought a cheapie plastic thermal deal a couple years ago - you fill one part with warm water and put the insert full of milk into it, cover, and let sit overnight. I simply stirred in some Dannon vanilla yogurt as a starter. Sure enough, the next day, I had a bucket of yogurt! Though it was thin and kind of bitter (I think I used 1% milk). I drained it using coffee filters and a strainer over a bowl, which worked well. It was a fun project, though I wasn’t saving any money making my own.
No, they’ve got this nifty little coconut scythe for splitting the coconut in half and getting at the water. The stool is this little plank with a spur attached that forces you to squat/crouch and grate the coconut against the spur while you are on your haunches. God knows why my mother clung to it for so many years.
You should have seen the fuss she kicked up when he told her she couldn’t grind her own wheat on these two big round stones. Poor Mummy and Baba. They grew up all Pollanised and organic and foodie and they didn’t even know it.
Back then it was just called “being poor”.
We eat plain yoghurt on rice as our staple starch and the store bought always seemed thick and creamy to us. My mother uses lowfat milk so hers always came out “slippery”. Also after a while the starter makes it super sour compared to store bought and we craved that milder taste.
I put honey and nuts on mine. Sometimes I mix in shredded, unsweetened coconut. I let the yogurt ferment for 24 hours. That gets rid of virtually all the lactose. It also makes it extremely tart. My cat loves it.
I got a new yogurt maker for Christmas, one with a big tub instead of little cups. It’s wonderful. My old one had the most annoying cup lids in the world.
I haven’t tried it, but yogurt can be made in a crockpot. There are lots of other interesting methods if you hunt around, such as leaving it on top of the fridge to ferment.
I am trying this recipe for the first time tonight! My crockpot (vintage 1978, hand-me-down from my uncle that still works perfectly) is currently covered with two thick bath towels…in the morning I will either have fresh homemade yogurt or a big nasty mess…only time will tell!
I make yoghurt every week…my SO (The Bloke) lives on the stuff, and whilst I can’t really stomach it, he reckons it’s good shit!
I take 2 metric cups of skim milk powder and dissolve it in 1 litre of cooled boiled water. I then add app 100-150ml of the previous batch of yoghurt, stir it up, place into sterilized jars, then bung into very warm clime (the car sitting in the driveway is an absolute PREMIUM spot) for a few hours until the culture sets.
Then it’s ready.
Oh, in the cooler weather, I pop the jars onto the mantlepiece above the fireplace for a constant warmth. If all else fails and all natural temps are too cold, put it in the oven at app 50c and that should see all the cultures set well.
The top of the fridge was my former method. It worked fine.
I also tried the low oven, but it didn’t work as well.
The crockpot idea intrigues me–but I might just break down and buy a big tub yogurt-maker. The way I go through yogurt, a maker would probably pay for itself pretty fast.
I was all puzzled until about 4/5 od the way through this thread - I thought I had made it, but I never had to heat anything. Then it hit me - I had made yogurt cheese! I used to love that stuff! Now I get to make two things - homemade yogurt and blast-from-the-past yogurt cheese! Thanks for the inspiration/education!
I make yogurt cheese often. Use it as sour cream for dips and dressings. Add some mayo and the normal stuff and it tastes good. Yogurt blue cheese salad dressing is great.
That’s why I’m going to get a larger maker in addition to the one I have now. The other methods work fine, but you have to keep an eye on it.
Honey and nuts with strained yogurt is a Greek dessert. Wonderful stuff. The company teela brown mentioned, Fage, makes a single serving Greek Yogurt / Honey product, great mix of tastes.
I also have one of those yogurt makers, haven’t broken it out in ages…
Honey and pistachios. Yeah! I break the nuts up a little, so some of the flavor gets into the yogurt.
I recently found this discussion on how to make yogurt on Chowhound.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/567084
This jives with what some of you have said about using your oven lamp, or the heating drawer.
But having read that Crockpot blog, I completely forgot about that one! I was considering using the Chowhound method, but needed to kind of get prepared for that one. I think I will definitely try the crockpot method first.
Well, I woke up this morning to a big crockpot full of what I can only describe as yogurt soup or yogurt sauce. It has a very mild yogurt flavor, and it’s too liquid-ey to eat as yogurt. Is there anything I can do to solidify it up a bit?
It tasted good on some fresh raspberries, and my dairy-whore cat loved it, but I’m not sure what I can do with a bowl of yogurt soup. Any ideas? (I suppose I could use some of it as a substitute for buttermilk in baking - maybe I’ll make some cornbread muffins later).
Did you use either the gelatin or milk powder that some mentioned? (I don’t know if adding it after works, because I’ve never made it myself. I’m just curious so I know for when I do it!)
You could try the oven method. Just prepare the oven as others have directed, then put the crockpot pot in the oven. I’m assuming the pot is removable.
I know that if you just let it sit, it’ll eventually be yogurt.
Did you use a starter?
When I read the crockpot method I had to wonder how they attained constant even temperature, especially the 110F area. With that method temp. is always falling, unless insulation is perfect.
The other cause of failure could be lack of virility in the culture- even active culture yoghurt loses zing given time.
Yes, I think the problem was that it didn’t stay warm enough. I think if I try this again, I will cut the three-hour wait time in the middle of the recipe to about one hour - I think it just got too cool during those 3 hours. Or, it could be that my vintage crockpot didn’t hold the heat in as well as a modern one might.
I used some nonfat plain yogurt from Trader Joe’s, bought that morning, as the starter, so it should have been OK.
For now I have placed the yogurt soup in a bowl on top of the fridge, and I’ll leave it there all day, to see if that helps. I also plan to pick up some cheesecloth and try to make “yogurt cheese” with some of it. (And I’m thinking my recipe for sour cream chocolate cake might work quite nicely with yogurt soup instead of the sour cream, right?.)
I tried the crockpot method with the gelatin, because I was using skim milk, and don’t recommend it; the texture came out gloppy and kinda gross, frankly. I’m still using it, since I primarily make smoothies with it, but next time I’m going to try adding powdered milk. It also came out very mild, not very “yogurty” so I think I will also try cutting the sitting time and insulating it sooner (I used a giant beach towel and wrapped it completely, not just over the top).
Powdered milk works good, and is good for you.