I would say it's a part of my plan to start the New Year off right diet-wise, but to be perfectly honest, I'm planning on scarfing down some pumpkin pie (also homemade....from pumpkins I grew on my front lawn) left over from last night's party after I'm done.
Making yogurt is easy, and is cheaper than buying it from the store in most cases. I could buy a 32 oz plain Greek yogurt from Walmart for $3.98 (plus tax). That comes to about $0.75 per 6 oz serving. On the other hand, I can buy a gallon of milk for $3.08 (plus tax) and get about 11 6 oz servings of Greek style yogurt out of it. That's about $0.28 for the same 6 oz serving. Both the yogurt and the milk are priced from the Great Value brand. Of course adding in fruit, sweeteners, etc will make it more, but depending on what you use, still less than a $0.60 Yoplait, with the added benefit of knowing what is in your breakfast.
All you need is a starter, some basic kitchen tools, and a food thermometer. I used a Yogourmet culture to get started, but you can also just buy a cup of yogurt with live cultures in it if you want. One of these days, I want to explore the different yogurt cultures offered by Cultures for Health, but all in good time. Right now, what I have works just great!
Anyway, you bring the milk up to 180 degrees. It will be just below boiling, and will form a bit of a skin on the top. Then you let it cool to 110 degrees and add your culture.
Put it in a nice, warm place for 8-12 ish hours, and let it do its thing. I use my oven with the light on, but there are pretty sweet yogurt makers and stuff you can get if you want. I'm sure they have better temperature control than my setup, but hey, mine works just fine.
Notice the small 4 oz jar. That's the culture for my next go around. I set it aside at the beginning so I don't have to worry about it later.
Don't stir the yogurt while it's culturing! Yogurt likes to be left alone for the process. At the end of the time, I gently tilt it side to side to see if it's set the way I like it.
You can eat it as is after culturing, but it may be thinner than you're used to. I like to strain mine.
I line a colander with coffee filters and strain out around 2 quarts of whey. This gives me the consistency I prefer, although you can do more or less (ending up with more or less yogurt in the end with a thicker or thinner consistency). You can also use cheese cloth, a flour sack, or thin dish towel, but I'm preferring the coffee filters for now. I do plan on getting large industrial size ones after I finish off the batch I have.
This is the whey that gets strained off. Looks like lemonade right? Well that's just perfect, because that's what my Sexy Man likes me to make with it.
I add in sugar and a little lemon juice to taste, and that's exactly what it tastes like. Sometimes I'll also throw in some raspberries for color.
Anyway, at the end of the day, (and it does take about a day) I have slightly more than 1/2 a gallon of delicious fresh yogurt and slightly less than 1/2 a gallon of whey for about $3.00. Not a bad trade off!
My favorite way to eat homemade yogurt is with a bit of honey or maple syrup mixed in. One of these days, I'd like to have maple trees I can tap, and/or honeybees to make my own sweetener myself. Also a cow.
No comments:
Post a Comment