How to Make Yogurt at Home
(Page 2 of 5)
March/April 1980
By V.B. Ramig
GETTING READY TO MAKE YOGURT (YOGHURT)
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The first step in making yogurt is to gather your equipment and ingredients. You'll need some jars with lids (any clean glass containers will work fine), a large waterbath vessel for keeping your brewing batch warm — either a picnic cooler or a canning pot you can wrap with heavy towels — and standard kitchen equipment, including a measuring cup, cooking pan and stirring utensil. A food thermometer can come in handy, too, but if you don't have one around, you can "guesstimate" the crucial temperature limits of 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 115 degrees by dabbing some heated water on your inner wrist. Liquid at 100 degrees feels comfortably warm to the touch, but at 115 degrees there's a bit of a sting.
Your cooking ingredients will be either skim or whole fresh milk, a bit of honey (the sweetener is optional), and your yogurt starter. The starter can be either some fresh (unflavored) yogurt — a good quality commercial brand, made without gelatins and fillers and containing live cultures; Or you can use a package of freeze-dried yogurt culture. You can get the special packets from health food stores and some drugstores, or by mail from specialty and home brew shops that sell cheesemaking cultures. Each yogurt culture will produce a differently flavored food, so experiment!
CHEAP AND EASY YOGURT RECIPE
Start with clean yougrt-making equipment to eliminate any unwanted microscopic critters. The yogurt recipe here produces one quart of finished yogurt, but you can make any amount you wish by proportionally raising or lowering the various quantities.
Start by drizzling two to four teaspoons of honey around the bottom of a two-quart cooking pot to sweeten the culture and also help prevent "milk burn" on the metal vessel. (If you'd rather not add sweetener, you can eliminate this step.) However, don't incubate yogurt with honey if you have trouble digesting lactose, because in that case you'll want to ensure that the only sugar the lactobacilli can consume comes from the milk.
Next pour in 4 1/2 cups of milk, cover the pan with a dark lid (to help retain vitamins), and slowly heat the liquid until a skin — with bubbles trapped underneath — forms on top of the milk. This bacteria-killing step should take about 25 to 35 minutes. If you are using a thermometer, you can stir the milk if you like, and let it get up to about 180 degrees. Let the milk hold its temperature a few minutes, and then cool it — quickly or slowly — to around 115 degrees.
You're now ready to stir in either your starter packet or one tablespoon of fresh yogurt that contains live cultures (check the package). Some folks will also add a couple tablespoons of powdered milk to thicken the yogurt's texture at this stage, but it is not necessary. Now pour the warm liquid into your cleaned jars (or 1 large jar), screw on the lids, set them in your water bath canner or cooler, and pour 115-degree water into the large container until the levels of the milk and water are equal. Then seal this incubator and let the yogurt incubate. If you're using a canner, it's best to wrap warm dry towels around it. You may also prefer to use a yogurt maker that uses electricity or batteries to hold the temperature, but it isn't necessary.
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