Yoghurt!

I recently found out that evidently the word "yoghurt" is not spelled the same in british and american english. Yet another example of how impeded my ability to communicate with my peers is. Yeah, you can stop talking about how much I communicate anyway. I know I talk a lot. I know.

But honestly this post is not about my tendency to not stop the flow of wisdom that proceeds forth out of my mouth, but rather about my attempts to make yoghurt. You see, it recently occurred to me that while yoghurt costs over $3 a quart, milk only costs about $3 a gallon. And I eat a lot of yoghurt. So, I thought, I could save a LOT of money by just making my own yoghurt! Well, actually, I probably would not actually save any money because I would be so much more likely to actually eat the yoghurt that I made that I would eat enough more of it to negate the fact that it cost less. Whatever. The point is, less money, more creamy tart yumminess. So I set out to find a simple way to make homemade yoghurt.

That search, while it may sound easy, is not. It is hard. Yoghurt is a thing which is shrouded in mystery, difficulty, and precise temperatures for prolonged periods of time. I do not have a) a yoghurt maker, b) a double boiler, c) a candy thermometer, or d) a heating pad thingy. It would seem that my yoghurt making ambitions were doomed. However, after much perseverance (I really like yoghurt) I finally happened upon a blog which told you how to tell when the milk and the yoghurt are the right temperature without a thermometer! With a little tweaking, the recipe worked great! My yoghurt is lovely! It is wonderful with fruit and granola in it for breakfast, and I feel oh-so-healthy as I eat it. And yes, I do eat about 4 times as much yoghurt now, which means I spend about the same amount of money on it as before, but hey, I get more of it now! =D

Ok, I'll stop talking and just show you how I make it.

You will need:
a pan
a whisk
sealable containers for your yoghurt
a blanket or several towels

milk (the amount of yoghurt you want to make, that's how much milk you need)
1/4 cup yoghurt (for your first batch. after the first batch, you can use the leftover yoghurt from your last batch)

Step 1: heat the milk in the pan, stirring lots with a whisk. Like, stir it a lot. Obsessively. Do not go do your laundry. Stay right there and stir that milk. Sometimes I wash dishes in between stirring, but mostly do stirring. Or it will burn. Yuck. Heat it until it begins to froth like that stuff you put on top of cappuccinos, and steam is coming off of it a lot.

Step 2: Now transfer the pot with the milk in it to a sink of cold water. I know, it seems weird, heat up the milk, cool the milk, but trust me it works. Promise. Continue stirring the milk, and cooling it off until you can keep your pinky finger in the milk for 10 seconds without it burning. Why? Because that's the right temperature. Just is.

Step 3: Take the pot out of the cold water and stir the yoghurt into the milk.


Step 4: Pour this warm milk-yoghurt stuff into your yoghurt containers. Make sure your containers aren't cold when you do this, they should be warm. You don't want to cool off the milky yoghurty stuff.

Step 5: Snugly wrap up your yoghurt containers in the blanket or towels and put them somewhere they will stay warm. It being Oklahoma in the summertime here, "somewhere they will stay warm" is right there on my kitchen counter. I mean, it's 105 degrees, they aren't going to cool off. You might need to find a warmer place, like near a heater.

Step 6: leave them there for about 8 hours, maybe a bit more depending on how it is doing. If it is getting thickish (it will still be pretty runny) and tart, then they are doing good.

Step 7: When they are done, take your containers out of the blanket and stir the yoghurt vigorously. You are trying to stop the bacteria activity, so it doesn't keep yoghurtifying. Then, put the containers in the fridge overnight (about 8 hours again). The yoghurt will thicken some in the fridge.

Step 8: Eat!