Several years ago I had occasion to hear a very unusual story about yogurt from one of the oldest of Chicago’s old-school German chefs. I was working on an article on food preservation at the time, and nobody but nobody preserves food like a old German, my friends. We were poring over the technical details […]
READ ONA couple of emails over the weekend from readers who asked that I clarify the fact that yogurt is not 100% lactose free. Indeed that’s true. The most you can say about yogurt is that, like cheese, it’s a dairy product in which the lactose has been drastically reduced (usually by half, frequently by 60% […]
READ ONThose who looked at the previous post carefully may have found themselves wondering: Well now if the bacteria eat most of the lactose in the milk, does that mean people who are lactose intolerant can eat yogurt? Why yes it does. And in fact most people who are lactose intolerant do indulge freely in it. […]
READ ONThis is where the fun happens, at least for me. The milk is 120 or so degrees and the starter (room-temperature commercial yogurt) goes in. The cooler starter brings the temperature of the milk down to about 115 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point the lactic acid bacteria start gorging themselves. Seizing the closest available lactose […]
READ ONJust about everyone who reads a yogurt recipe through for the first time has the same reaction: Wait, you mean I have to BUY yogurt in order to MAKE it from scratch? The answer is yes. BUT…a little of the commercial stuff can be used to make a whole lot of homemade stuff. Up to […]
READ ONThere are several competing theories when comes to heating milk for yogurt. One holds that you needn’t heat the milk much at all. Another, that it must be heated to boiling and kept that way for hours. Still another, that the milk should get very hot but only for a little while. To help us […]
READ ONThis week is going to be geeky. Those of you with weak constitutions should leave the building now.
READ ONSince yogurt is almost all milk, this step matters, as it will have big impact on your yogurt’s consistency and flavor. Contrary to what you might think, whole milk, while it does deliver more fat, doesn’t make home-made yogurt thicker. In fact it makes it thinner, or perhaps I should say “soupier”. For reasons I’ll […]
READ ONPretty much everywhere between, say, Scandinavia south to Turkey and from there east to India or so. Anywhere, in other words, where you historically find herding peoples who consume the milk of ruminants, be they cattle, yaks, goats, sheep, water buffalo…camels even. Just when and where yogurt first appeared no one knows, but there’s no […]
READ ONIn less than a day I’ve been inundated with yogurt-making methods from around the world. It’s been great, but daunting too. I had a feeling something like this might happen, since putting up just one recipe for yogurt is like putting up just one recipe for bread. There are lots and lots of different ways […]
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