Contrary to the multitudes of ingredients listed on yogurt containers these days, real yogurt is a really simple food comprised of only two ingredients: yogurt and bacteria culture. And it’s a lot simpler to make than you might surmise. So simple, in fact, that I know plenty of people (mostly of the “aunty” variety) that still make it at home. One of these people, is my mother. She makes it every week because, apparently, it’s that hassle-free and because, apparently, both my parents eat a lot of yogurt. So here’s how you do it.
What You Need:
5 cups of milk (preferably the mostly-skimmed raw milk you have left after making butter of the cream)
1/2 cup of yogurt (store bought or from a previous batch)
Note: you could use mail ordered bacteria culture
What to Do:
Whisk the 1/2 cup of yogurt so that it is smooth and keep aside. Wet the bottom of a large pot with just a little bit of water to prevent the milk from sticking to the bottom. Heat the pan over medium heat and add the milk. Use a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature. Bring the milk to a slow simmer around 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Immediately turn off the heat and let the milk come to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Whisk in the yogurt and then transfer everything to a glass bowl. Store the bowl in a warm, heat-insulating place such as the microwave or the oven for 4 or 5 hours. At this stage it will still look runny. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or the cover to the glass container and keep in the refrigerator. It will thicken up at this point and can be stored until ready to use, up to a week.
P.S. The photo shows the layer of cream that has become yogurt-ized on top. That can just be mixed into the rest of the yogurt for a smoother texture and appearance.
While you could devour your yogurt just as it is, you could use some of it to make yogurt cheese. Wait, yogurt cheese? What’s that? It sounds weird. Well it’s actually not so weird. As you drain away the whey from the yogurt, it gets thicker and thicker. One stage of thickness is what we call Greek yogurt, but if you continue to drain the whey away, the cheese becomes the consistency of cream cheese – and it’s sort of tastes like it, too. But it’s actually way better than cream cheese because 1) it’s lower in fat 2) it does not contain rennet and 3) it costs a lot less than buying cream cheese.
via The New York Times
What You Need:
Yogurt – any amount
What to Do:
Place a dish towel or a few layers of cheese cloth into a strainer and place the strainer over the bowl. Put the yogurt into the cloth and let it sit for several hours until it reaches a thick consistency. Alternatively, you can wrap the yogurt in a dish towel or cheese cloth and tie the cloth the neck of the faucet or to anything, really and just let the whey drip into the skin or into a bow. In either case, you can help it along by squeezing some of the water out…or you can just let it sit and do its thing.
You can use the cheese as is or add flavors to the mix. It can be made savory by adding herbs or it can be made sweet like in the Indian dessert: srikhand.
Another thing to note is that the leftover whey can be used in a variety of ways and still contains a lot of protein. You can use it to soak beans or rice, add it to smoothies or use it to bake. Apparently you can also make some cheeses from whey, but that’s a different story…
Currently based out of Boston, Jesal is a blogger, freelance writer, yoga enthusiast and lifelong vegetarian who spent four years eating her way through New York City and various other cities around the globe. After answering hundreds of emails and phone calls answering the question, "Where's a cool place I can take my vegetarian friend out to eat" she started Veggiewala to efficiently share her knowledge of the vegetarian food scene with curious carnivores, flexitarians and other vegetarians.