Here is the promised yoghurt post. The last attempt at yoghurt-making was a great success, so I wanted to set out clearly how it was (finally) achieved in the hope that it might be useful for others (and myself, because I'm not good at making notes), especially those who don't want to buy lots of special equipment and who are still aspiring to that large house complete with Aga, or indeed airing cupboard.
I used:
Two pints semi-skimmed milk, direct from the milkman
A small pot of Yeo Valley natural yoghurt, direct from Sainsburies.
A bit of double cream that had been lurking in the fridge for a week
A fine Norwegian thermos flask (I'm sure an English thermos would be perfectly alright)
A square of muslin from Lakeland, as overpriced as I predicted
A large measuring jug
A whisk
A sieve
A medium-size bowl
1) I heated up milk until boiling point, then let it cool until I could just about keep my finger in it and count to ten. Any skin that formed was just picked off (even though I hadn't really sterilised my fingers).
2) While the milk was heating, I boiled a kettle and swilled out the thermos with boiling water before replacing the top. It might not be a bad idea to sterilise the whisk as well if there is water left over.
3) I put tablespoons of yoghurt in the measuring jug and mixed it the with cream. To be honest I'm not sure what difference this made, but it did come out nice and creamy.
4) When the milk was at the right temperature I added first a bit and then all of it to the yoghurt-and-cream and whisked it up.
5) The whole lot was poured into the thermos and left for about eight hours until the evening. Voila, yoghurt! As usual it needed a bit of whisking to incorporate the whey that has separated. This was left overnight in the fridge.
6) The next morning, I lined the sieve with muslin, set in over the bowl and poured the yoghurt in. The only problem was that I had a bit too much yoghurt for the size of muslin, so it made a bit of a mess and couldn't really be squeezed to help the liquid out. This was left in the fridge for a few hours.
7) During my morning coffee break (it's great that PhD students can work from home), I opened the fridge to find that most of the whey had strained off and that lovely thick yoghurt remained!
K and I agreed that this was easily the best yoghurt either of us had ever eaten.There were only two problems. Firstly, the amount of yoghurt produced was not actually that much for a litre of milk, but to make more I would need to double all the equipment. Secondly, it is a bit time-consuming and we are not sure if we can go back to eating shop bought yoghurt now!
Showing posts with label In the Dairy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In the Dairy. Show all posts
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Monday, 5 May 2008
Making Yoghurt: Part Two
I had another go at making yoghurt, but alas with less success. This time I put in a bit more of the starter culture, using my last attempt at yoghurt rather than a bought pot. I also kept the milk a bit hotter than before - apparently the temperature is all important because yoghurt bacteria don’t like much above or below 50 degrees centigrade (it goes without saying that I don’t have a thermometer for kitchen use, so instead I just stuck my finger in). Whatever I changed, I shouldn’t have. It still was definitely yoghurt (so thumbs up to my DIY starter culture), but it had separated into curds and whey. I tried mixing it back together, but it still had a grainy, cottage-cheese-like texture of curds, but without actually being nice. Back to the drawing board with the yoghurt.
Research has suggested that I may have left it too long (for which I blame the Saturday morning lie-in), or that the proto-yoghurt may have been too hot when I put it in the Thermos. Perhaps I should invest in a thermometer. I'm thinking a trip to the cookware shop is necessary in any case to track down some muslin so that I can strain my next attempt at yoghurt. The only snag in this otherwise simple plan is that Cambridge is the type of place where the only purveyor of such goodies is Lakeland, meaning that everything is good quality but costs about four times as much as I think I should pay for it. I may have lived in Cambridge (pop. over 100,000) for nearly six years, but I've never quite got used to the fact that household items are both more widely and more cheaply available in my parent's rural market town (pop. 4000). Bloody southerners.
Research has suggested that I may have left it too long (for which I blame the Saturday morning lie-in), or that the proto-yoghurt may have been too hot when I put it in the Thermos. Perhaps I should invest in a thermometer. I'm thinking a trip to the cookware shop is necessary in any case to track down some muslin so that I can strain my next attempt at yoghurt. The only snag in this otherwise simple plan is that Cambridge is the type of place where the only purveyor of such goodies is Lakeland, meaning that everything is good quality but costs about four times as much as I think I should pay for it. I may have lived in Cambridge (pop. over 100,000) for nearly six years, but I've never quite got used to the fact that household items are both more widely and more cheaply available in my parent's rural market town (pop. 4000). Bloody southerners.
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Making Yoghurt: part one
I have a new toy. It’s called ‘The New Complete Book of Sustainable Living’. It contains many wonderful things, with sections on how to build your own cowshed, what to look for in a healthy pig, how to spin flax, etc etc. One of the many wonderful things is a nice large chapter on making your own dairy products. This looked good, I thought, for households like ours which inexplicably manage periodically to accumulate a vast milk surplus despite a) getting the same amount of milk each week and b) not having a cow. I quickly skipped over all the stuff about making cheese, since there is no way that a cheese press and four gallon copper pot will fit into our kitchen (although for the interested, there are instructions on how to build your own cheese press at http://fiascofarm.com/dairy/cheesepress.html). Yoghurt, on the other hand, sounded more promising.
My first investigations into the world of home-made yoghurt were marred by the fact that the author of this book, along with many writers, assumes that you have somewhere where the yoghurt-in-process can be kept warm at a constant temperature for about twelve hours. I suppose this could be done in an Aga or airing cupboard, but we don’t have either of those. In fact, I think an Aga might actually be larger than our entire kitchen. Thanks to the internet, however, I discovered that some very clever people have realised that a normal thermos flask will keep milk warm just as well as an Aga. All you have to do, I learned, is to sterilise a thermos with boiling water, boil some milk, let it cool down a bit, add two tablespoons of live yoghurt, and leave the whole lot in the thermos overnight. Easy!
Anyway, the results weren’t half bad. The yoghurt hadn’t thickened as much as I’d hoped but it was definitely yoghurt. It rather reminded me of the kind of pouring yoghurt or keffir that you get everywhere in Scandinavia and which I used to put on my muesli when I lived in Norway. That suits me fine, since I greatly miss the wide range of tasty dairy products peculiar to Scandinavia and would be delighted if I could make my own. Still, I would like to make a thicker yoghurt, and maybe add some fruit or honey. I’ll have another go once I’ve drunk this batch.
My first investigations into the world of home-made yoghurt were marred by the fact that the author of this book, along with many writers, assumes that you have somewhere where the yoghurt-in-process can be kept warm at a constant temperature for about twelve hours. I suppose this could be done in an Aga or airing cupboard, but we don’t have either of those. In fact, I think an Aga might actually be larger than our entire kitchen. Thanks to the internet, however, I discovered that some very clever people have realised that a normal thermos flask will keep milk warm just as well as an Aga. All you have to do, I learned, is to sterilise a thermos with boiling water, boil some milk, let it cool down a bit, add two tablespoons of live yoghurt, and leave the whole lot in the thermos overnight. Easy!
Anyway, the results weren’t half bad. The yoghurt hadn’t thickened as much as I’d hoped but it was definitely yoghurt. It rather reminded me of the kind of pouring yoghurt or keffir that you get everywhere in Scandinavia and which I used to put on my muesli when I lived in Norway. That suits me fine, since I greatly miss the wide range of tasty dairy products peculiar to Scandinavia and would be delighted if I could make my own. Still, I would like to make a thicker yoghurt, and maybe add some fruit or honey. I’ll have another go once I’ve drunk this batch.
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