Both
Harold McGee and
Ann Marie Rolke have tried to talk me into making yogurt lately, so I finally caved in. I bought some Strauss whole milk, heated it, let it cool, stirred in two tablespoons of yogurt I had in the fridge, let it sit for about nine hours and now I have some delicious, kefir-style yogurt. I don't know why it's so thin. Maybe I didn't use enough starter. Regardless it's fucking delicious. Way different then commercial yogurt. It's lightly tart rather than sour. I'm hooked now. How will I ever eat commercial yogurt again?
Sac has a campaign going to keep the dastardly Nestle water plant from stealing all our water, and they're having a screening tonight at the Crest of the movie
Tapped at 5:30 and 8 pm. Bottled water is an industry of the past, not the future, and it's not progress to bring this plant to Sacramento! Try to attend the screening, or if you can't, go to the
Save Our Water website, read the facts, and click on "take action" to see what you can do.
Mine was also very thin when I made it. I only did it once. Maybe commercial yogurt has stuff added to it to thicken it?
ReplyDeleteGW
It probably has some stuff to thicken and stabilize it, but I still think it's possible to get thicker homemade yogurt. I'll try again soon.
ReplyDeleteThe longer it sits the thicker it'll get. My dad used to let a pot of yogurt sit in the corner of the living room for days and days. I'd stare at the pot, whaich was wrapped in towels, just waiting for the delicious 'matsoun' to be ready. Soooo good!
ReplyDeleteThat's good to know, because I got freaked out about drinking it after it had been out for nine hours. I thought it might have gone bad. Can't wait to get home and chug some yogurt and gross smiller out!
ReplyDeleteI drove by Le Bon Soup and it was open. Did you already discuss it on here?
ReplyDeleteI wonder using cheese cloth would help thicken the yogurt?
-Anna
By the way, I kept thinking about the cute mental image of lil DP staring at the yogurt and waiting for it to be done.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Le Bonne Soup seems to have reopened. That's great! I wish I would get jury duty so I could go there.
McGee recommended cheese cloth to make Greek-style yogurt, but this stuff is still so thin that it would go right through cheese cloth.
It's been my experience that keeping the yogurt-to-be warmer (around 110, 115 degrees) for longer makes it thicker, higher milkfat content certainly doesn't hurt (good call on the whole milk), and leave the yogurt in the fridge for a few hours before you try straining it through some cheesecloth.
ReplyDeleteWhat starter did you use? I've had batches based off Fage that barely needed any straining when they were done.
I thought yogurt only came from wall-mounted taps. There's about 500 places in Sacto where this substance comes outta the wall and you can smother it in hot fudge. What a great city we live in! Sucks to be in Davis; they only have about 25 such places now.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a functioning thermometer, so that made the heating hard, but McGee's recipe was really vague anyway so I figured it didn't matter. I used Mountain High yogurt I think? What is Fage?
ReplyDeleteFage is a brand of strained Greek yogurt, available at TJ's or the Co-Op. I haven't had Mountain High, so I can't compare the two.
ReplyDeleteAt 130 degrees, water is hot enough to trigger your "get the hell away from that" reflex. Since I put my protoyogurt in water in a large thermos and replace the water every few hours, it's a helpful rule of thumb when I don't feel like grabbing my thermometer.
I hear tell you can make ricotta from the strained whey, too, but I haven't been that adventurous yet.
the thermometer helps immensely. i pop the thermometer in bring the milk to 185 turn it off, add the starter at 115 stir it, put it in a ceramic crock and then let it sit in a warm coleman cooler for 4 hours. i get consistent results which are usually pretty thick.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the stuff on the website isn't the most accurate. the amount of people who don't recycle in Sacramento isn't going to be affected by the presence of the plant. Nor will the amount of bottled water being consumed. And technically, water that is drank gets treated-cleaned and released back into the rivers and sent down to southern california.
ReplyDeleteAll this plant would change would be who is getting paid to produce them, which would be Sacramentans who need jobs.
Preventing the plant is not the answer. Educating people about recycling is.