Helen RandellThe Yoghurt Experiment
March 21st 2010 10:36
Strawberry yoghurt
One of my New Year's Cooking Resolutions was to make my own yoghurt. A good friend who reads my blog saw the post and offered to lend me a yoghurt maker to start me off. The yoghurt maker is essentially a sealed heating pad which keeps your little glass jars of yoghurt mix at the required temperature to grow the culture. This takes eight hours.
I began with a very simple yoghurt recipe in George Calombaris' Greek Cookery where he suggests to take a mix of 800ml of full-cream milk, bring it to the boil, then allow it to cool to blood temperature (around 38 degrees C) then add a pinch of salt and 1 cup of yoghurt with live cultures. He then suggests you leave the yoghurt mix at room temperature for about 12 hours.
I used the Paris Creek, biodynamic natural yoghurt as my culture starter and poured the yoghurt mix into the yoghurt maker, instead of leaving it to stand. The yoghurt formed well, but I wasn't happy with the texture, finding that it wasn't smooth enough. However, looking at the store-bought Paris Creek yoghurt, the texture was very similar to what I made.
Sweetened natural yoghurt - a bit too lumpy for my tastes
After trying it sweetened on my cereal, and not really enjoying it, I used this home-made natural yoghurt: as a base for tandoori chicken; a delicious yoghurt cake; and also frozen cherry yoghurt (very similar to this, substituting the apricots with cherries). All of these things were very tasty, and the yoghurt performed well. I think the process of churning (for the frozen dessert), and mixing with other ingredients helped the texture.
Another friend of mine suggested I try the EasiYo yoghurt sachets which you can buy from the supermarket. For something different I went for the strawberry flavour. The EasiYo sachets are designed to be used with the EasiYo yoghurt maker (essentially a double thermos, where the yoghurt mix is placed in a canister and then placed inside an insulated tube which you fill with boiling water). My friend has used this system but describes her results as patchy. I made up the yoghurt mix, which is done simply by adding water to the sachet ingredients, and poured the mix into my borrowed yoghurt maker. Eight hours later and I had smooth, strawberry yoghurt, which was perfect on my cereal, and as a snack straight from the jar.
The EasiYo sachet makes 1 litre of yoghurt, and costs just under $4 - which is fairly comparable in price with a tub of store bought yoghurt, so you don't really save any money making your own. The main advantage I can see with this method, is that you can keep a few sachets in the cupboard and save yourself a trip to the supermarket if you have a yoghurt-style emergency (and eight hours spare to let the culture work). Also, you do save on a lot of packaging.
So, I have another couple of experiments I want to try. Firstly, I am going to give George's recipe another go, but instead of using Paris Creek as the culture base, I'll go for a smoother style to begin with. Secondly, I did use skim milk when I made George's recipe the first time (it was what we had...) so, I'll give it another shot with full-cream and see if that changes the texture.
Anyone else made their own yoghurt? Any hints or suggestions?
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Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
Will leave the yoghurt to you though
Great read!!
Comment by Samantha Elley
Food Journo
The Sandwich Shak
Vintage Foodie
Little House among the Canefields
I agree with Jason, well done on th experimenting. I've often toyed with the idea of making my own yoghurt but not done it so far.
Hope it goes well,
Sam
Comment by Helen Randell
Rough Cooking
Thanks Sam - I'll be sure to update once I have tried more experiments, that way it will be a cinch to do your own!