Tricks to Making Yogurt
If you want to eat locally-sourced, organic yogurt with no added ingredients, make your own. With easily available household items, milk, and a yogurt starter, you'll be on your way to home-grown cultures. Personalize your varieties and flavors. Go thick and creamy with a full fat Greek yogurt, or flavor up your lowfat yogurt with honey and fruit. Spoiled milk never tasted so good. Does this Spark an idea?
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Basic Ingredients
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One the best parts of making your own yogurt is being able to control the ingredients used. For example; to make locally-sourced organic yogurt, buy locally-sourced organic ingredients. Since most of the yogurt is milk, buying high quality milk is very important for the quality and taste of your final product. Remember that the quantity of milk you use is more or less the quantity of yogurt you'll end up with. Most yogurt recipes suggesting using a plain store-bought yogurt with active cultures as a starter. This is fine, but check out the quality of the ingredients in the yogurt you're using as a starter. Another option is buying freeze-dried yogurt starter cultures. Some recipes, like Alton Brown's from the Food Network, require powdered milk. Check out the ingredient list on the powdered milk before using it to make your yogurt.
Tools Needed
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While you won't need a fancy yogurt maker to make yogurt, some basic tools are absolutely necessary to the process. Fortunately, you probably have many of these things already, and the rest are easily aquired. Apart from the basic ingredients, you need two containers that fit into each other with enough space between them for a heating pad, as well as a plastic or metal spoon, cooking thermometer you can clip to the side of your container and a saucepan. The Food Network's Alton Brown suggests a narrow wine bucket, a cylindrical plastic container that fits inside it wrapped in the heating pad. Large pots that fit inside each other also work well to create the insulated double-boiler effect that will keep your milk fermenting until it's yogurt. Sterilize your tools ahead of time in boiling water or a dishwasher, to reduce risks of contamination.
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Time
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Making yogurt takes time. Fortunately, you'll only be actively involved for a short time before the cultures take over. After heating and mixing your ingredients as instructed by the recipe you use, you'll have to leave your milk to ferment in it's heated container between 3 to 12 hours. While it's a good idea to check up on it every few hours to make sure the temperature is close to 115 degrees F, during fermentation, you don't need to stand watch. The longer you let yogurt ferment, the tangier and thicker it becomes. After your yogurt curdles, you should stir it, pour it into containers, and chil it overnight to stop the active cultures from further thickening or souring the yogurt.
Variations
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Once you have a basic yogurt recipe down pat, it's time to try out variations on a class. To make a thicker yogurt like Greek yogurt, or a yogurt cheese without further fermenting yogurt, strain extra liquid from the yogurt with a colander lined with a clean cotton fabric with a tight, fine weave. Leave it over a bowl in the fridge for a few hours until it reaches the the thickness you prefer. In "The New York Times," Mark Bittman recommends this type of yogurt for "superior" spreads and dips. Use different types of milk for different fat levels and flavors. For extra flavor, add in honey, fresh vanilla, cocoa powder or fresh or canned fruit afterwards.
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References
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