On Monday, James came come asking if we could make yogurt and reciting detailed instructions, complete with temperatures in Celcius. His Indian coworker had come back from a long visit home asking if James has some yogurt starter he could borrow. When James said we'd never made yogurt, and that he didn't even know you could make yogurt at home, the coworker told him exactly how to do it.
I have wanted to try this, but either I was a little intimidated, or I thought James would think it was insane to eat milk that has been sitting out warm for hours, or I just never got around to it. Some combination, I guess. But James wanted to try it, so here we are!
We buy plain yogurt anyway for Sammy's food, and ever since Zack turned into a Wild Thing I've been making up plain yogurt with fruit for him too (just what I need, one more item to do before I can go to bed every night!). In fact, it seems like I can't keep enough yogurt in the house. I was just at the end of the large carton (that I bought yesterday) and wishing I'd bought two, even though I had to buy the even more expensive organic brand because my usual expensive organic brand was out of stock. So, we used the end of that carton for starter on our experiment. It wasn't difficult at all. Could it be that this would be sustainable enough that I could keep us in yogurt with minimal purchases???
Expect a report on sucess or failure in the morning!
For now, I've got to go cheer against OU.
Oh, I've always wondered how easy/difficult it is to make my own yogurt! I'd love to hear how the experiment turns out. I buy organic yogurt all the time. My favorite brand is only sold at Randall's and I hate making extra grocery store stops just for that! It would be lovely to have some on hand. :)
ReplyDeleteSo far it's all been good! I started out with Nancy's Organic and I think the flavor is very similar to that.
ReplyDeleteI've messed up a little but it hasn't seemed to do any damage. On one batch I bumped the oven setting while I was cleaning up and it got a bit hot - maybe 200 in the oven but the yogurt didn't have time to get that high. The yogurt around the edges of the bowl didn't seem as smooth as the rest, but it tasted fine and we ate it. On another batch I boiled the milk over while sterilizing it, but I went ahead and used it and it tastes good. So... I guess it's pretty mistake proof?