Monday, October 27, 2008

Making Yogurt




In Thailand there's a drinkable yogurt that we bought almost every day. I decided I wanted to try to make some, and instead of using store-bought yogurt I looked into making my own. It turns out that it's pretty easy. It's even easier if you use dry milk instead of fresh. The thing to remember is that you want a sterile environment to put the yogurt culture into, so just keep track of keeping things clean.

  • Boil about a quart of water (to sterilize it).
  • Put 3 & 3/4 cups of the water into a (clean) 1-quart mason jar or other similar container.
  • Once the water has cooled down some, add 1 & 1/3 cups dry milk powder and mix. I just put the (sterilized) lid on and shook it so I didn't have to worry about sterilizing a stirring implement.
  • Let the milk cool to less than 140 degrees and add a few tablespoons of live-culture yogurt.
  • Keep the mix at ~110 degrees for about 8 hours. I filled two other mason jars with boiling water and put them in our handy Thai cooler, with a towel under them so as to not melt the plastic. I then put the towel over the top of them a bit and put the jar with the mix on top and put the lid on the cooler.
  • When the mix has become suitable yogurt, flavor as desired. I was able to match the Thai stuff pretty well by mixing in some juice and sugar.
I haven't tried yet, but adding more milk powder is supposed to thicken the yogurt up substantially.

I need to come up with some appropriate title for my kitchen experiment series. Any ideas? Next up--beef fat candles.

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