This thread has made me re-think my old yogurt maker. I’ve had it for probably about 25 years now. It’s a Euro Cuisine. Looks like this:
The instructions are to boil the milk, let it cool to around 95º, then add in the yogurt starter and put the mixture in the little glass jars (without the plastic lids) under the big plastic dome and turn it on. The unit heats up (warm but not burning). As far as I know, it doesn’t cycle through different temperatures. There’s no timer, for example, so no way for the unit to know if you’re cooking for 6 hours or 10. (Ignore the numbers on the side: they’re useless.) It makes excellent yogurt every time.
But now I’m wondering: is it going through the different temperatures required for the different bacterial cultures? This machine was made back when yogurt was a relatively new concept in the U.S., and “live cultures” weren’t talked about. Going through the 93(!) questions asked on Amazon for the current version of this product, I’m not finding an answer.
Anyone here have any knowledge or thoughts on the subject? Thanks.
soy yogurt…bleck! I make homemade coconut milk yogurt all the time! so yummy, so easy.
Take canned full fat coconut milk (the kind that is just coconut and/or water, no additives)
Divide between large or small jars.
Add a spoon of yogurt to each to start (or some culture powder) and shake.
Put in your oven and leave off but turn the oven light on.
I let it culture warm for 2 days then move it to the fridge. Since canned coconut milk is already sterile you can skip all the bothersome boiling stages, just make sure you jars are sterile by running through a dish washer or cleaning well.
Same here. I also make dairy yogurt all the time. I’ve never done the pre-boil of the milk, what a pain in the arse. I simply use a new container of milk that hasn’t been opened. Made hundreds of batches and never had a bad batch, not even once.
I’ve found I can completely skip the skim milk powder if I use full fat milk and go twice as long on the oven stage. i only use milk + starter and it is thick. I also have a greek yogurt strainer, so if i feel like that i can transfer it when ready.
I’ve found it always turns out better if you mix in any flavors extras after you’ve made the yogurt. Things like honey can really affect the culture.
This one is a lot better made. I have one and use it to make yogurt for the children’s lunches as the jars are the perfect size. It has a timer. I’ve tried several different strains and cultures and never had an issue.
Note: the instructions with these types of yogurt makers say to leave the jar lids off during the culturing. Users on the forums say NOT to do that, putting the lids on doesn’t affect the culture and prevents you from having any bad jars.
Thanks! I don’t think there’s any reason to buy a new one, however, if it doesn’t do the variable temperature for the different bacteria strains. Mine works well enough for what it is. I just never thought about the temperature variation part of the process before.
Edited to add: you put glass jars in your kids’ lunches? =8-0
All the time, why? Is that an issue in some places? Most the kids in our school have lunches packed in a combination of stainless and glass to avoid all the plastic softeners that affect early developmental hormonal systems.
I wouldn’t worry about that, it is largely a misunderstanding of the scientific literature. There is a big difference between he optimal ranges, and good healthy growth ranges. The optimal ranges are just for maximum reproduction speed, the reality is these organisms do just fine in much wider ranges.
Almost all bacterial strains used for yogurt making thrive in very similar temperature ranges and are way more tolerant then most people think. For example, people often quote the peak ideal ranges assuming that those are required for rapid growth, they are not. They are just the peak ranges for maximum growth. Streptococcus thermophilus is often listed as 45ºC to
47ºC peak growth range, when really it starts rapidly multiplying at temperatures around 30ºC and dies at around 50ºC. The same for Lactobacillus bulgaricus. Bifidobacterium has an optimal growth range of 37ºC to 41ºC, but does very well from 28ºC and starts to die at 48ºC. Lactobacillus acidophilus has an optimal growth range of 37˚C to 42˚C, but does very well from 30ºC and starts to die at 55ºC.
The post above claims that starting with one temperature encourages one type of growth and then changing the temperature encourages another. This is not correct, any dominate strain will inhibit the growth of other strains unless they have a symbiotic relationship. A staggered start almost never works. This is why fermenting preserves foods, the good bacterial strains prevent new bad strains from growing, they also prevent new good strains from growing. If you want to start a multi-strain culture, you have to pick a range that they all do well at from the very beginning. I often start with a 16 strain starter culture. As you can see there is a large overlap that they all grow just fine in, and that is the sweet spot that most yogurt makers try and hit.
Likely your existing system is just fine for any common probiotic strain you throw at it.
edit: not all strains taste the same, you might not even enjoy the taste of yogurt produced by some of the other cultures. most the cultures we are discussing are thermophilic. there are also mesophilic cultures which product amazing yogurts and grow at room temperature (21°C to 26°C), they don’t need any heat at all. Mesophilic are often thick and cream and sweet, the thermophilic yogurts tend to be a little thinner and have more of a sour sour bite.
Once you go down this rabbit hole expect to be making kefirs kombuchas and more!
If you had said “stainless” I wouldn’t have reacted, but glass is an entirely different story. The pyrex-type glass used for storage containers these days is not like the old Corning Pyrex: if you’ve never seen what happens when it’s dropped, consider yourself very lucky. Shattered doesn’t begin to express what happens. It’s more like an explosion of billions of glass splinters. The volume increase is astonishing: one small bowl will fill up an entire grocery store plastic bag. Considering the substantial dings in the stainless water bottles and Stanley food jars (a wide mouth thermos) that come home after school and sporting events, there’s no way I would ever use glass as a transport medium for children or teens.
Some ice and water in the food jar to cool it down, then transfer yogurt from the glass jar or bowl to the thermos and there you go: no danger of glass shards flying into everyone’s food in the lunchroom.
Thank you very much for your detailed explanation about temperature ranges and incubation requirements. I really appreciate it. That’s exactly the type of understanding I was hoping to get.
I’ve got one kefir fan in the family, but basic yogurt is the common denominator for all. And I’m not a kombucha fan, so it’s not a likely choice for branching out in culinary exploration!
thanks! I don’t have a coffee filter (only aeropress / french press) but i do have cheese cloths as i have dabbled with ricotta / hallouni as well. Good to know though as most people have coffee filters and they are probably cheaper
I do heat it for that long if i am making it from a store bought yogurt, or if i am in the middle of something else (!). I leave it overnight just because it is convenient for me. interesting to hear about the change in flavour with a shorter time - makes sense i guess the increase in sourness is an increase ?/change in the bacteria but i am no expert on that! I think if the results are good stick with your current method
On raw milk, i believe the primary benefit is that it is unhomogenised which makes the texture quite different (creamier) and fattier. Also heating the milk does not kill all of the bacteria and enzymes. However, as i said above and in the article i have never tried raw milk and i also said “apparently” which i meant to signify that i got that information from someone else so i do not know much about raw milk yogurt making.
I am interested to hear that you don’t heat new milk - do you skip the heating entirely, or do you mean you only heat it to 51C? It would be nice to not have to boil it.
thanks for the extra info and corrections on the bacterial reproduction. Some of what i said in the article on that came from a fairly old guide to yogurt making so may have been based on older understandings of bacteria that are now outdated. Sounds like you know a huge amount more about it than me!
Thank you for promoting health giving delicious homemade probiotic foods! I appreciate you posting this to BoingBoing!
Learning to make your own is not only fun, inexpensive, and delicious, the health benefits are staggering, which shouldn’t be surprising seeing as bacteria outnumber our own cells in our bodies 10 to 1 and the human biome has around 1000 different species that it plays host to.
Thanks for the heads up on the glassware, some of it is indeed pyrex.
There are lots of other fun homemade probiotic foods to try. I make homemade kimchi, krouts, and pickles as well. From sourdough bread to cheeses, once you start making your own it is hard to go back to store bought stuff. I don’t eat a lot of bread, but nothing beats a slice of hot sourdough pumpernickel marble bread straight form the oven slathered in butter, and if you add some corned beef and krout and mustard you have a dang tasty ruben. The one area where I haven’t gotten into is fermenting your own alcohols, like plum wine and homebrew beer, but those are popular areas of fermentation as well, lol!
Oh, I hear you! Kimchi is a favorite in this house, and making our own would be useful because there are only a few commercially available versions which have no fish products in them. I had a sourdough phase and then decided it just didn’t work for us. We don’t eat a lot of bread, and when we do we enjoy many different types – some homemade and some store-bought – so remembering to maintain the starter properly when you’re only going to use it once or twice a month just wasn’t worth it to me.
Time and storage space are issues. Also, having family members with significantly different palates. In some ways it would be easier to have a very large family, because any food made would be eaten by enough people to justify the work.
Please share (the recipe, I mean – though if you’re willing to share the kimchi…) I tried using this recipe and it turned out inedibly salty. (I didn’t even compost it, figuring the salt would kill it all.) Now I’ve got this bag of kochukaru just sitting on the shelf.
EDIT: I replied before I read the rest of your post.
Well, damn… Here I am with my low HDL and high triglycerides…
Raw milk and unhomogenised milk are different beasts. Raw milk has not been pasteurised (heated briefly to 72°C or for a longer time to a slightly lower temperature, or for a very very short time to a very high temperature). Unhomogenised milk has not had the fat droplets broken up into such tiny bits that they don’t float. You COULD have homogenised raw milk although in practise you don’t get it, and you can very easily buy pasteurised unhomogenised milk. That’s what I grew up drinking all the time. The fat (cream) floats to the top, but there is no more or less actual fat in the milk than there is in homogenised. I much prefer homogenised milk for yoghurt, because you don’t have to stir in the fat that floats to the top.
I heat new milk, but just to the temperature I incubate it at. I don’t pasteurise it. No cooling and waiting step is involved. Basically I just mix everything up, put it in the water bath and it heats up to ~40°C (I don’t worry about being too accurate and I don’t heat it to 51°C, ~40° is fine) in a very few minutes.
I do realise you were not giving instructions for raw milk yoghurt, but think about it for a minute. The milk you buy in the shops is already pasteurised, so you don’t need to pasteurise it yourself unless it has been sitting opened in the fridge and is getting close to its “best before” date. If you use raw milk for whatever health benefits it is reputed to have, the last thing you want to do is pasteurise it. Because then it’s not raw milk any more.
Adding milk powder to the milk increases the protein concentration far more easily than simmering the milk for an extended period to evaporate water from it. It’s also much easier to control the amount, and hence the thickness of the yoghurt.
What you have to remember when you’re making cheese or yoghurt is that it’s not rocket science. Unhygienic peasants have been doing it for centuries; they didn’t have thermometers, they didn’t know about germs and being clean. We overthink things these days.
yeah the rubins are a rare treat that i allow myself now and then! so good though.
holy crud is that kimchi salty. wow.
note on the recipe below: You can do napa cabbage and green onion, but i usually do bok choy, kale, daikon, and green onion.
Basic Kimchi:
1. Chop up veggies (bok choy, kale, daikon, and green onion)
2. In a mixing bowl mix the following for every 6 cups chopped veg:
- 2 Tbs Glutenous Rice Powder (optional http://goo.gl/f6ddyh doesn’t contain gluten)
- 6 Tbs Kochukaru (Korean red pepper powder http://goo.gl/7RRjGX)
- 4 Tbs minced garlic
- 2 Tbs minced ginger
- 2 tsp sea salt (heaping) (not a processed kind with iodine added)
- 1 Tbs Fish Sauce (optional, can use soy sauce or water http://goo.gl/OHeKbK)
- 2 Tbs Apple Cider Vinegar (the kind with a mother to start the culture extra fast http://goo.gl/ryVGL3)
- Enough water to make it into a thin paste if it isn’t already.
3. Mix the chopped veggies with the paste and put in glass jars, add one piece of kimchi from a previous batch or store bought to each jar (optional: to start culture extra fast)
4. Place jars into a dark cubbord.
5. Once a day flip the jars upside down and shake to get the brine circulating over all the veg (or the stuff on top doesn’t do as well.)
6. In 2 weeks or so move to the fridge. Vent the jars every now and then by cracking the lids because pressure will build up.
You’ll have some awesome homemade kimchi to enjoy.
I pretty much just rough estimate everything i throw together, the recipe is very forgiving. You can increase or decrease the salt and hot pepper and garlic and ginger to taste. It is very forgiving as long as you are somewhat close to the recipe. If you ever have a batch that is too salty, add more veg and pepper powder. The salt should bring out the water in the veg, but if it seems too dry after day 2 add a small amount of water.
I hope that gets you started in the right direction! Cheers.
The beyond 100°C pasteurisation is “ultra pasteurisation”. Normal pasteurisation, as done to milk you buy in the shops, is 72°C for I think 20 seconds? Not long anyway. But it is a sliding scale, you can pasteurise by holding at 55°C for quite a long time (an hour or so I think from memory), that’s how they pasteurise eggs without cooking them.
I just listened to this podcast about foraging for ingredients and making homemade wines and vermouths. They had one recently about home brewing as well (beer). Pretty cool - would live to try making vermouth / bitters / gin
I make homemade kimchi, krouts, and pickles as well. From sourdough bread to cheeses, once you start making your own it is hard to go back to store bought stuff. I don’t eat a lot of bread, but nothing beats a slice of hot sourdough pumpernickel marble bread straight form the oven slathered in butter, and if you add some corned beef and krout and mustard you have a dang tasty ruben. 