Inspired by my friend Brian, I have been making more of my own yogurt. And after making our How To Make your Own Yogurt video, and our Solar Oven Yogurt Maker, i was thinking of how you could use at hand items to make yogurt.
Then I saw one of my neighbors had thrown out a styrofoam cooler, the kind that Omaha Steaks uses to ship people their frozen steaks. I took it home and saw that a heating pad blanket fit in it quite well. I cut a notch in the wall to allow for the cord.
steak cooler as yogurt fermenter
It works really well.
heating pad fits nicely in this
AND, I bought some yogurt starter, Yogourmet is the brand, to see if it was any better than just using some leftover store bought yogurt. And it is much better. The yogurt is much firmer, and i think tastes better.
Yogourmet works better than just using yogurt as starter, i think.
Wikipedia tells us about the origins of yogurt:
There is evidence of cultured milk products being produced as food for at least 4,500 years. The earliest yoghurts were probably spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus native to and named after Bulgaria.
The oldest writings mentioning yogurt are attributed to Pliny the Elder who remarked that certain nomadic tribes, including the Bulgars, knew how "to thicken the milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity". The use of yoghurt by medieval Turks is recorded in the books Diwan Lughat al-Turk by Mahmud Kashgari and Kutadgu Bilig by Yusuf Has Hajib written in the 11th century. Both texts mention the word "yoghurt" in different sections and describe its use by nomadic Turks. An early account of a European encounter with yoghurt occurs in French clinical history: Francis I suffered from a severe diarrhea which no French doctor could cure. His ally Suleiman the Magnificent sent a doctor, who allegedly cured the patient with yoghurt.Being grateful, the French king spread around the information about the food which had cured him.
What are your yogurt recipes and tips? how do you make yogurt? please tell us below:
Jan Kelley
Hi Eric,
Have you looked into making cheese? That would be fun!
denise
Eric,
If you put it in a tupperware container, wrap it thickly in a towel and put it by a radiator or the fireplace (somewhere warm) it turns out well. If you can set your oven to 100*, that works too, but I know alot of ovens cant be set that low. If you can find greek yogurt (I use Fage) with live cultures it tastes rich and creamy- more so than the yogourmet, I think. I do batches with 1/2 gallon of milk at a time. Breakfast is yogurt with some of my honey every day. 🙂 Love your show, btw.
Eric Gunnar Rochow
hey thaks for that info. yogurt recipes are pretty flexible aren't they? eric.
Sarah
I would love to see how to make cheese! You should really look into that and do a video! thanks for all the great info! love the site!
Kathy
I know that this is an old post, but I just ran across it.
I've been making yogurt for a while now and I find that the fastest, easiest way to incubate is to wrap it in a towel and put it in the microwave. I even made an incubation bag so I didn't have to deal with the towel falling off. Works GREAT!
tracy
I put my yogurt in jars in my dehydrator that I set at 110. it works wonderful