Yay! Food!

The first time we made yogurt, it was by accident.  We live in Switzerland where even the boxed milk is tastier than anything fresh off the farm in the U.S.  I never used to like drinking milk, but I’ve become a real convert since we moved here.  Migro, the market where we shop, has a “Budget” line with distinctive green packaging, and Migro budget milk is sold in 2-liter boxes.  We buy 4-5 every time we shop because Yaro is even more of a milk drinker than I am.

The boxes have fussy little plastic snap-tops, though, and sometimes they break and don’t close properly.  This was the case for one of the cartons we had in the fridge, and when we noticed a day or so later the milk was spoiled. Or so I thought.  My husband heard me curse and stopped me before I poured it down the drain.

“Wait, wait! Let me taste it.”

I shuddered and handed it over and he poured (or, rather, plopped!) some into a glass.

“Wow, this is really good!”

I refused his offer of a spoon.  He shrugged and ate some more.  Then he said, “Can you pick up a couple of big glass jars when you’re at the market?”

I did, and that was the beginning of our yogurt odyssey.  He started the next batch with about a quarter cup of the cultured milk. It was summer and he left the two 2-liter glass jars on the counter. In 6 hours they’d solidified into yogurt and I finally tried it.  Delicious!  We weren’t sure where the culture had come from, but the milk was certainly not spoiled and the results tasted like the best fresh yogurt we’d ever had.  I’d never have been brave enough to try that kind of experiment, but my husband grew up in Russia where, he tells me, they culture milk all the time. (He also noted that in some areas of the world milk seems to spoil rather than culture.  In Berlin, he said, he only got a nasty inedible product that was definitely bad.)

We refilled the jars each time they almost emptied, and learned a couple of things:  the cultures get weaker as they get older, so you need to refresh them occasionally; and, eventually you need to wash the jars because they get gunky up at the top and start to smell nasty.  We have a nose for it now. When we get the faintest hint of mildew it’s time to swap jars.  To restart we’ve used various live culture yogurt, and recently we tried a yogurt starter powder from EuroCuisine which works really well.

When I did some research on the internet I found a lot of sites that insisted that the yogurt culture had to be kept at a warm temperature, and of course there are lots of yogurt makers to help you do that.  But we found that just putting the culture into the bottom of the jar, pouring in the boxed milk and stirring, covering the jar and leaving it alone for 7-12 hours always does the trick.  You do have to use boxed milk, though, if you don’t want to go through the hassle of heating fresh milk to 185 F before you mix it with the culture.  The purpose of heating is to get the whey proteins to coagulate, which makes for a nice thick, creamy yogurt.  But that’s already been done to the boxed milk, so it’s ready to go, as is.

I also read a ton of stuff about sterilizing jars. We don’t do it.  We put the glass jars through the dishwasher at a minimum of 65C/149F and every so often (when they start to get that mildew smell) I boil the rubber seals on the stove or super heat them in the microwave.  Then I let them dry and put them back on the jars.  We’ve been making and eating our yogurt this way for six months, without a bellyache, so it works for us.  Your mileage may vary.

Our yogurt keeps about a week before it starts to get “old” (tastes fine, but gets kind of grainy and separates in the jar), but it rarely lasts more than a couple of days.  We eat it too fast!  You can do the usual yogurt things with it, like stirring in vanilla extract and cinnamon.  I like to add some to my Blender Gazpacho when I’m in the mood for a creamier soup. I spoon it into my lentil curries.  I slather my chicken with yogurt and tandoori spices before roasting. I also love it mixed with a little cottage cheese, served over fresh pineapple. And sometimes we just drink it straight, with a bit of sugar or honey.  That’s the great thing about yogurt.  I can’t remember how I ever could have lived without my endless supply!