Seeing as my family really love yoghurt, i thought making yoghurt would be a great idea, and cheaper too!
Not quite. Making yoghurt from raw milk takes time, takes watching temperatures, takes timing, takes steralising, takes fiddly little pots and tops. But the results are more delicious, cheaper yoghurt and has that special feeling of "I made THIS!" and "this is OUR yoghurt".
They say, necessity is the mother of all invention, and not having access to our friendly dairy farms for a few weeks meant the necessity for another approach, and the discovery of a simpler process!
So, here's my setups, which remove almost all the preparation stages and gets right into the yoghurt making fast!
Materials
- 1 x glass jar - 200ml
- 1 x table spoon
- 1 x pot deep enough to submerged the glass jar
- 1 x yoghurt maker
- 4 x 1 litre tetra cartoned milk
Bacteria
There are many types, the following are found in the sachets that I use.
- Streptococcus thermophilus
- Lactobacillus bulgaricus
- Lactobacillus acidophilus
- not enough bacteria; see Addition (5).
- adding bacteria to the milk could bring in unwanted bacteria and phages; so the jar and spoon were boiled for a few minutes to sterilse them.
- The yoghurt maker usually takes 12 200ml jars (2.4litres) not 4 litres; so instead of using the jats, i left the milk in the cartons! That's the trick!
- Boil the jar and spoon in the pot for a few minutes; then take them out on a clean place and allow to cool.
- add milk from a carton into the jar, add sachet of bacteria; aggitate until dissolved.
- open all cartons and spoon in the jar's content, usually 2 tbsp per carton.
- Close the cartoons, lay them down in the yoghurt warmer, set for 12 hours.
- After 12 hours, remove cartons, let them stand for at least an hour in a cool place, then transfer to fridge.
That's it! When the cartons are down to fridge temperature pull one out and squeeze the content into a bowl, and you should have lovely thick deliciously tasting home made yoghurt!
Boil the water in the kettle first.
Rather than lying the cartons on their size, you could stand them up, doubling the quantity again, that's 8 litres from a single sachet!
There is a but; I felt the 8 litre configuration didn't permit enough heat uniformly throughout the carton. As we have 2 identical yoghurt makers I just tipped the other upsidedown and placed it across the tops of the cartons, giving - i think - more even temperature.
That said, i have not yet tested a single maker on 8 litres.
Given that the cartons are somewhat higher when lying on their side than the regular jars, I added a couple layers of dry cardboard around to give more heat retention. I imagine a towel or two would have the same effect.
Depending on the cartons material, you may be able to cool the yoghurt faster by running cold water over them or using an ice bath.
Also, put the cartons at the top of the fridge. Hot air rises and would heat up anything above it if you put them at the base of the fridge, bad bacteria will florish.
One sachet of mine says 1-to-1 litre. Another 1-to-3 litres. Experimentation is what you need to do.
I found that 1 sachet of the common type that I used is suitable for 8 litres of milk, at least!
You could also make a mother culture, and when set, melt a tablespoon into the jar with milk, and then spoon on into your cartons. This can have quite a varied result, so experimentation is key to a successful yoghurt pipeline.