I’m still on the weight-loss-journey (going well, thanks for asking) and always trying to find new foods that comply with my goal and on the other hand don’t taste like utter sh*t. Yoghurt is one of the things I didn’t have on the radar for a long time and that I now re-discovered as a protein-rich snack – and I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t try to make my own, right?
And It’s surprisingly easy, just some kind of copy & paste procedure of propagating “old” yoghurt (i.e. store-bought) to “new”, multiplying it in the process. I’m not an expert (yet), but here’s how I did it and it worked decidedly well. Even my wife liked it.
Preliminaries:
Yoghurt is, reduced to the essentials, purposefully created sour milk, obtained by encouraging lacto-acidic bacteria to thrive and thus magically transform milk into yoghurt 🙂 The process requires sugars present in the milk, the right temperature range and – of course – bacteria to work, either of which are easy to come by. Over time, the bacteria transform milk sugar into lactic acid and a little bit of CO² via the process of fermentation, thus “souring” the milk, altering its texture, improving digestability and adding a ton of nutritional benefits (see the wikipedia article linked above).
The method itself is ages old and derives from the present-day middle east. This is just the bare bones of yoghurt, surf the internet a little if you’re interested, there’s a ton of more information to be found easily.
Ingredients:
- 1 l Milk (* see notes below)
- 2-3 tbsp. store-bought natural yoghurt
The Process:
In a pot on the stove over low heat, get the milk to a temperature of 40 °C (104 °F), let the yoghurt come to room temperature. You can use most kinds of (real) milk here, fat content doesn’t matter.
(*) If you are going to use fresh, raw milk however, you need to pasteurize it prior to proceeding in order to kill off the inevitable potentially harmful bacteria contained in the milk. Bring the milk to about 90 °C (194 °F) for five minutes and subsequently let it cool down to 40°C.
Add 2-3 tablespoons of freshly opened natural yoghurt to the milk and mix in thoroughly with a whisk. Then divide the mixture into clean (and preferrably sterilized) sealable jars, not tightening the lid. Now it’s all about maintaining the temperature for the next 10 – 12 hours: The range has to be between 37 and 42 °C (99 – 108 °F) which is the spectrum in which the yoghurt bacteria thrive. Above: They’ll just die, below: they’re not able to proliferate satifactory.
The by far easiest way is to put the containers in your oven. In some models it is sufficient to just turn on the oven light to maintain a sufficient temperature, but with modern oven-LEDs, unfortunately this option is out of question. So just set your oven to 40 °C and monitor the internal temperature with a common household thermometer. Every oven is different, so make sure to tune the set temperature vs. the actual temperature accordingly.
Another option would be to place the containers in a styrofoam box, together with a (closed) jar of water at ~50 °C (122 °F), or to simply wrap them in cloths/towels or a blanket. I personally would rather rely on my trusty oven.
After 10 – 12 hours take the jars out and tighten the lids. You can store your fresh yoghurt in the fridge for easily a week.
Summary:
Nothing that I would do on a really regular basis (or even – god forbid – to avoid buying “bad industrial” products for ethical and organic-lifestyle reasons, lol) but fun to do from time to time, pretty manageable and indeed really tasty.
The actual work is done in under 10 minutes, the rest is just waiting, plus you can make a shit-ton of yoghurt from a single jar from the grocery store and even use your self made stuff again for more.
