Better Living Through Homemade Yogurt
- Posted by: Xeni Jardin
- on May 13, 2009 at 9:00 am
Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin explains how fast people can still enjoy slow food.
When the economy took a nosedive, I did the same thing a lot of other Americans did: I looked at my household expenses and my lifestyle with newly frugal eyes, and began thinking about costs and personal priorities in new ways. That included food.
Rethinking what I cook and eat post-econopocalypse meant simpler, slower food; a more local and traditional diet which, in fact, makes good sense in any economic weather. But I live an urban life. I spend a lot of time online or working in short attention bursts. I don’t have a lot of time to cook or prepare food, and my city apartment doesn’t afford room to raise goats or grow tomatoes. Despite this, I’ve gradually eased into a number of new rituals and good habits that reduced my grocery bill and make me feel happier and healthier. One of them is making yogurt each week.
It takes maybe 20 minutes of actual work and attention, zero equipment beyond stuff I already had in my kitchen, and yields a yummier, healthier, and yes, “probiotic” product that costs five to 10 times less than the store-bought stuff.
Here are the basics of rolling your own yogurt the lazy Xeni way. First, choose your starter culture. You can order this online, get it from a fellow slow foodie obsessive, or just do it slacker-style, like me: Buy a small single-serving container of plain yogurt at the corner bodega. Any brand with live Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus cultures will work ($.99 worth of the ubiquitous Dannon does just fine). The instructions that follow are for homemade yogurt with other yogurt as a starter.
Next, pick your milk. I use organic 2 percent, but whole milk is even richer. I don’t like the more acidic taste or runny texture of yogurt made with lower-fat milks (though you can add dry milk powder to these to compensate). Full-fat soy milk will work if you’re vegan, but it forms a more gelatinous “set” than cow or goat milk.
Next, heat your fresh milk to 180–190 degrees Fahrenheit, which is right about when it starts to steam and form little bubbles. Heating to this point changes the structure of whey proteins within the milk, and helps ensure a nice consistency. I improvised a double boiler for heating milk like this: Half-fill a large, wide metal pot with water, and set a metal bowl filled with milk in the middle of that pot. Boil the water, and stir the milk in the bowl that floats in that water.
When you’ve scalded the milk, let it cool off to about 110–120 degrees. If you have a thermometer in your kitchen, use it. If you don’t (and I still don’t), do the “baby bottle” test: dribble a few drops on the inside of your wrist. If it feels really warm but doesn’t burn your skin there, it’s just right.
When you’ve cooled the milk to this temperature, whisk in (or stir with a spoon—whatever!) two tablespoons of yogurt. This can be the store-bought yogurt, or the last two spoons from your last batch of homemade stuff. I like to thin it down with a bit of the warm milk before I stir it in, to make sure it’s evenly distributed.
Now you need to incubate. After you’ve mixed your “innoculation” yogurt into the warm milk, pour the “innoculated” milk into a sterilized glass jar or other container, cover it, and keep it still and warm for about four to five hours until it sets. I just cover that same metal bowl I used to scald the milk, so I don’t have to bother sterilizing another dish to pour it into. Sometimes, I’ll instead use a bunch of small ceramic cups, sterilized by running them through my dishwasher. All your equipment should be sterile, because you don’t want to introduce any other bacterial contaminants that could prevent the yogurt from setting.
To keep it warm during that four to five hour setting period, I wrap my metal bowl in some kitchen towels, and leave the swaddled bowl in the oven with the pilot light on. And really now: leave it alone in there! It’s like rising bread dough. If you jiggle it or poke at it, you’ll mess up the setting process. Go play Warcraft while you wait, do some email, whatever, but don’t fuss with it.
As soon as your yogurt sets, stick it in the fridge to allow it to further firm, and halt acid production. If you leave it in “incubation” mode too long, it will become harsh tasting, and eventually, the whey will separate. You don’t want this.
Here are a few websites I bookmarked when I was making yogurt for the first time. Some of these offer suggestions on other cool stuff you can do with yogurt, like straining it through cheesecloth to make the thick “Greek style” kind, or using it to produce other products like yogurt cheese. It never lasts long enough in my home for any of this fancy stuff, though. A spoonful of local raw honey, maybe a handful of nuts or fresh seasonal fruit, a pinch of salt—nom nom nom.
Some of the websites listed below offer equally easy alternatives to my “oven pilot light” method for incubating the yogurt. You can set your milk on a heating pad overnight, or pour it into jars resting inside an insulated beach cooler filled with warm water. But isn’t this great? You don’t have to buy a yogurt-making machine, and there are a number of ways to reliably produce delicious creamy yogurt with stuff you have lying around the house already. Cheap, easy, lazy, yummy. Enjoy!
LEARN MORE
Fankhauser’s Yogurt Making Illustrated
University of Missouri Extension
National Center for Food Preservation
Harold McGee’s “Curious Cook” column in The New York Times
Wild Fermentation, which is a website and a terrific book.
Xeni Jardin is a Boing Boing tv host and executive producer, and Boing Boing blog co-editor living in Los Angeles, CA.
Photos by flickr user (cc) Biology Big Brother
DISCUSSION: 40 Comments
If you’re so into healthy, why not use raw milk? Or why would you even suggest soy? Soy is good for candles. It wasn’t meant to be consumed unless properly fermented as the Chinese do.
- ”why would you even suggest soy?”Probably because there are many of us lactose intolerant folks out there.”I’m lactose intolerant. I have no patience for lactose and I won’t stand for it….”–”Seinfeld” (NBC)
I’m glad to see you carried through with it and it works so well for you! Thanks for sharing it with others.
Even easier is to use a culture from Caspian Sea Yogurt (Matsoni). This culture works best at 70F to 80F which means it works at room temperature; no incubating. The result is a little less tangy, and a lot more creamy than a typical yogurt. It also has a brilliant white color as opposed to the more typical ivory color. Cultures can easily be ordered online and you only have to do it once. From then on just save a little of the old batch to inoculate the new batch.
Hmmm. That looks like British milk to me. They don’t have sainsburys in the U.S.
Some of us have electric ovens.
I got a very inexpensive Donvier yogurt maker to handle the fermentation. I also add about 1 part powdered milk to 4 parts 2% milk to give it more of a custard like texture, and some no-calorie natural sweetener. I am lactose intolerant, so a nice long fermentation that gives the critters time to eat all the lactose suits me fine.
You can also do this really easily with a crockpot–even less hands-on work!http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/10/you-can-make-yogurt-in-your-crockpot.html?wpisrc=newsletter
I’ve strained yogurt through cheesecloth and it’s a PITA (and the cheesecloth is relatively expensive for a one-use item, plus my regular grocery doesn’t stock it). I find straining through a coffee filter works as well or better and coffee filters are a dime a dozen. Don’t forget to save the whey — it makes a tasty drink or can be used in baking.
Straining with a cheesecloth is a pain in the a$$? Not in my experience. PS you can use cheesecloth over and over–just put it through the wash.
#3:12PM – Really? Could this be why my cats, who love yogurt, but are lactose-intolerant because they’re cats, can eat it all day long and not get the runs?
yep – the fermentation process destroys most of the lactose in the milk, so it’s usually a usable product for those who are intolerant.Some people are vegetarian, so prefer to make yogurt with soy milk.Homemade yogurt rocks – glad to have you in the fold!
Nice article…unfortunately, very similar to this….http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/dining/15curi.html Including a word for word, character for character quote from the original Harlod McGee NY Times article.
Great article. I really think we should kick out all of the mexicans.
Simple way to make yogurt- as we have been doing it in India for centuries-
Boil 2% milk and allow to cool on the stove till just warm to touch-add 1/4 teaspoon of any yogurt – stir well,cover with a lid -leave it overnight on the stove.Next morning it is set-put it in the refrigerator or will become sour soon at room temp!
I like the style and the approach and feel like having a go. What you wrote reads well and is clear ( before trying).
I sure hope this works but as noted above, this is word-for-word the same advice as in the NYT article and I had no luck with it. I must have done something wrong (even though I used a thermometer and was pretty careful) so maybe I’ll try it again. I would like to know if Xeni wrote this or stole it…
I started making my own yogurt a few weeks ago, after finding Harold McGee’s article. It’s great!Also, plagiarism is a serious charge. No part of this article is stolen from McGee’s. I’m not generally a fan of Xeni’s writing, but accusations of plagiarism are unjust and unwarranted.
You can do this even faster by microwaving the milk on High for about 7 minutes (your results may vary, depending on the power output of your microwave) until it reaches the desired temperature range of 170-190F. Then refrigerate the milk for about 45-50 mins (again, your results may vary) until it reaches the range of 110-120F.
We combine yogurt making with bread making. The post-bread temperature of the oven is perfect for yogurt, especially with the warm baking stone inside.
For even less hassle you can buy a yogurt maker. Yogourmet has one and they also sell starter. Have used it for two years and it makes great yogurt every time. Also, if you let it ferment for 24 hours (instead of 4 hours) it gets rid of the lactose. This also increases the amount of probiotics in the yogurt. BTW, this stuff works wonders for those suffering from Crohns.
Fastest way to cool the milk down? Put it in a sink full of cold water. Takes only ten minutes for it to get to the desired temperature.
Yo, I thought this article scanned familiar and thanks to the comments above I see that I did read it wordier version a couple of weeks ago in the NY Times. Xeni, you’re better than this I thought.
To the anonymous commenters suggesting that this blog post was plagiarized:
I’ve never been accused of plagiarism before, and it’s upsetting. If I’m going to throw away my reputation as a journalist, I’m not going to do it for a blog post about fermented milk, for cryin’ out loud.
Ehm. Heating milk to boiling, then putting it in the fridge waisting tremendous amounts of energy just for a yogurt which in it’s pure form *is* actually already dirt cheap is supposed to be 10x cheaper? Is the milk in your country for free as well? I don’t get it. (except for the fun of making the yogurt yourself)
When you say keep the soon-to-be-yoghurt warm, roughly what temperature are we talking about? In the winter, of course one would need to keep the yoghurt in the oven with a hot-water-bottle (alas, no gas oven here). What about summer, when the temperature of the kitchen easily ranges from 85-115 degrees depending on the time of day or night? Would the yoghurt be fine on the counter, or would I have to find some way of cooling it to below room temperature? I have the same problem with summer baking; I didn’t have any success at baking until the kitchen temperatures dropped in the fall to around 75-90 degrees.