Yogurt making

December I was stumbling around on amazon looking for a hot water heater to give John as part of his Christmas gifts. He's forever boiling water for tea and ramen noodles, so I had the grand idea that he'd love a plug in water heater because voila! hot water lickty split. As I was browsing small appliances, I stumbled across the Salton yogurt maker.

???? I was puzzled. I mean, how is yogurt made? There are cows involved and some sort of germ because lactobaccillus has all been the rage, but that's about all I knew. I figured that there had to be magic and boiling and complicated chemistry. Friends, there are cows (two kinds) and almost boiling and yogurt starter (think sourdough bread), and that's about it. It's easy!!! You, too, can be making fantastic yogurt. Look, here's how.


You need two kinds of milk: liquid kind and the powdery kind. Half a cup of the instant stirred into four cups of the liquid kind. I use nonfat milk because it's healthier. It makes great yogurt.

Combine the milks and stir, heating until it's at 200 degrees. The thermometer is very important.

You don't want the milk to boil or scald. It smells really yummy while it's heating, too.

When it hits 200 degrees, which is about ten minutes of slow stirring, remove from heat and cool to 110 degrees. I speed this up by filling the sink with a few inches of cold water and then putting the pot in it. Keep stirring so it cools evenly.


Then, when it's at the right temp, in a small bowl mix a ladle-full with the starter. You can use yogurt as your starter, or you can buy starter. If using yogurt, you must be sure it's yogurt with active cultures, which means live bacteria in it. Dead bacteria won't work, being as they're dead and all. Live ones make new yogurt, but even then, you have to be very, very careful as they're tempermental. If the milk is too hot, they die. Too cool? They don't kick off or will take longer to process. Don't beat or whip the starter into the milk, either, as you might be too hard on them, but if you don't mix it thoroughly into the milk, the yogurt might thicken only on the bottom. It's art, people!

If you use homemade yogurt from an earlier batch as your starter, you have to use it within five days of its birth. Longer than that and it's adolescent starter and all it wants to do is sit around and play on its Wii. It won't start the new batch.

I use starter that I buy through amazon. Is there anything you can't buy on amazon? I think not. Anyway, it comes in a vacuum sealed pouch and it's all in French, except for the part that's in English. It's made in Los Angeles, so why the French and not Spanish? Whatever, here it is.

That's the pouch in front. The container that it is leaning against is part of the R2 unit. The bubble on top of R2D2 comes off and the container and a top for it slide down inside of R2. The yogurt maker heats the liquid to the right temp to become yogurt. It takes a minimum of four hours for the milk and the starter to combine and make yogurt. From searching around online, I've found that if you have a gas stove whose pilot light is on all the time, you don't need a yogurt maker as your oven is the correct temp. However, we're all electric here at the Black Hole. I need the yogurt maker.

ETA: You can adjust the tartness of homemade yogurt by varying the amount of processing time. For a mild tasting yogurt, process 4-6 hours. For a tarter tasting yogurt, 8-10 hours. I have found that I like six hours of processing time. So, six hours in R2D2.

Then it goes in the strainer. Oh, the strainer! What a marvel for the strainer drains all the whey (you remember Little Miss Muffet don't you?) and the yogurt thickens to the consistency of ricotta cheese. Here's a piccie of the yogurt and the strainer. The strainer is wavy and on the right.

The strainer sits in a plastic box and there's a gap of an inch or so between the valley floor and the bottom of the box. When the yogurt is strained, it has the consistency of Greek yogurt, which I adore and which costs $6 or more at Kroger's. Kroger just started carrying the Greek yogurt and I adore it. However, whatever I love, Kroger unfailingly decides to discontinue and even amazon can't always provide. You don't believe me? Here's a list of the wrongs done to me by Kroger:

Neilly's Ultimate Seasonings: African Marinade and Sauce (mild formula) Absolutely faboo on tilapia
Zoic a fantastic protein drink that tasted good
My favorite granola, whose name fades into the mists because they discontinued it about six years ago
My favorite oatmeal, which wasn't Quakers, and whose name also can't be found in my brain anymore. When I went to Baltimore in the summer of 2006, I bought every last one I found and brought them home in my duffel. I also brought home a lot of beer and one bottle broke and got a box of the oatmeal wet. It smelled pretty darn good for such a disgusting mess.

So, you can tell that it's just a matter of time before Kroger decides that the market for Greek yogurt doesn't exist. This time, I'm ready for them. Hah! I make my own. So there, Kroger's! And don't even start with me that I should switch to Publix. They're too expensive for starters, and secondly, I don't have the brain power to keep the layout of two, grocery store chains in my brain. I've got to remember all sorts of stuff, like the lapsed-late renewal period for master cosmetologists and the exceptions to Georgia's open records law. Those alone take up more gray matter than they should, so Publix has no chance. What spare room there is is devoted to keeping track of all of the mythology of the X Files and where the roots are at the Thomson trails.

Anyway, yogurt. It's marvelous and you can make it yourself. Go. Buy it at amazon. R2D2 and the strainer together cost about $25. Free yourselves from the tyranny of some buyer at Kroger's headquarters in Cincinnati and make your own. It's downright tasty.