Yogurt!

Secret: I have been wanting to make my own yogurt for a while now. Finally, inspired by my sister Lindsay, and a book I am currently reading, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," I finally decided to get acquainted with L. acidophilus, and give yogurt a go. Some people might find it strange, this desire to make yogurt, and I suppose then, this is not a great time to say I've also wanted to make my own cheese. It might also seem odd to want to make something time consuming when you can go to Wal-Mart and find it for 58 cents and bring it home lickety split, and eat it just like that. And there's always the question about needing to use yogurt as a starter to make yogurt. As I brought everything home and assembled it, Chad, though very supportive, asked me, "you need yogurt to make yogurt?" like somehow I was making this process more complicated than it had to be. But yes, it's not that you need yogurt to make yogurt, per se, you just need the active live cultures, your friend and mine, L. acidophilus, which is found in yogurt. You can buy the bacteria by itself, but it's just easier to get it from yogurt. So, stay with me here, it might seem complicated, but it's not really. I'll share what I learned through this process.

One thing that's really important is to make sure all your pans and measuring cups and spoons are very clean. Here are my supplies. All you really need is milk, and the tiniest bit of plain yogurt. It's sort of fascinating to me how you can take one thing, like milk, alter the pH and temperature and make it into something entirely different.




You just heat the milk until it starts climbing up the sides. Some people say you should boil it, others say you shouldn't. I don't understand how it can climb up the sides without boiling, so that's how it worked for me. Then you take it off the heat and let it cool to 95 degree Farenheit.



Once it's cool, you add about 6 oz. of the cooled milk to 6 oz. yogurt, and mix it until it's smooth and homogenous.



Then you add that mixture back to the rest of the cooled milk, and combine that well.



Then you pour it into prepared glass jars. This whole process took about one hour, most of which was waiting for the milk to cool.



I've been contemplating making yogurt for quite some time now, so last weekend when I wandered into Sur La Table (fancy kitchen store) to look around, and found a yogurt maker on clearance, I was ecstatic. I had visited some yogurt making sites online and they used a cooler filled with water at a certain temperature to put their yogurt in, and this is where these methods differ. All I had to do was put the filled jars on the yogurt base and cover them with the lid and turn the switch on. Then the base keeps the yogurt incubating at a constant temperature for the next twelve hours. I am interested in trying the other method to see how keeping the yogurt in a warm water bath in a cooler makes a difference, if it even does.



One thing that definitely occured to me, later, was the necessity of thinking ahead. Since yogurt has to be incubated for 12 hours, that means, twelve hours from the time you turn the switch on, you need to turn the switch off. Well, darn it, I thought of that AFTER I turned the switch on at approximately 2 p.m. yesterday. So yeah, that was fun, staying up and waiting until 2 a.m. to turn it off. Which, I did, and subsequently put it into the fridge to set, for three hours. I actually ended up leaving it in the yogurt maker all night long, not because I fell asleep waiting but because it didn't appear to be the thicker consistency it needed to be at 2 a.m. So it went into the fridge this morning.



I am not keen on eating plain yogurt, although you do need to have plain yogurt for cheese making, and also to make more yogurt. And I do have recipes for fruity yogurt, which I would like to try. But since making plain yogurt is kind of a fundamental skill, that's what I stuck with this time. That didn't mean I couldn't flavor it after it was done though. I just poured in a smidgeon of jello powder to flavor it. (And subsequently make it very neon-colored).



And then I ate it! Yum, yogurt.



Because this was my first try, I was a little anxious to taste it and so I didn't leave it in the fridge as long as necessary to set up. So it was a little bit thinner than traditional yogurt (this might also have to do with the fact that it was made with 1% milk). I could actually have bypassed the raspberry jello flavor, because the yogurt had a nice flavor all on its own, even for being plain. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job for my first effort. Philosophically, it feels really satisfying to make something edible that takes time. I think in our fast paced world, where we get high speed internet, instant messages, instant pregnancy tests, fast food and so many other things we expect to be instantaneous, that particularly with food, we've sort of forgotten where it has come from. And that's not to say I don't love to feed my kids a Happy Meal every now and then, or hop online and get connected with my parents in India instantaneously... I love quick meals and instant communication as much as the next Generation X, Y, or Z-er. (And let's be honest- I did use a plugged in appliance to make this yogurt). But what it comes down to for me, is because the yogurt took time, and I had to wait for it, I was more grateful for it-- because I knew where it had come from, and the work, however small, that went into making it what it was. That is why my yogurt maker will continue to be busy, and so will I, making good food to feed my family. Next stop: Cheese.