October 3–10, 1996

food

Yo, Yo, Yogurt!

Non-cooking for beginners, or how to do lots of amazing stuff with homemade yogurt.

By Jim Quinn

Here's a recipe that will save you money and astonish your friends.

Like all great traditional recipes, it has countless variations and requires only the barest minimum of equipment and human skills. Do you have a stainless steel pot with a thick aluminum base? Can you bring liquid to a boil? Can you count to 10? You can make your own yogurt from cow or goat milk, your own yogurt cheese, sauces, no-fat desserts, and improve the taste and nutrition of all the veggies you cook. All you need to do is buy some living yogurt as a starter (preferably from a health store) and combine a few tablespoons with boiled, cooled milk.

Besides, yogurt is interesting; it's a living culture whose growth and health, taste and texture, depend on the weather. This is recreational food! There are electric makers available, but they cost money and are completely unnecessary. Yogurt existed for thousands of years before the plug-in kitchen appliance.

Homemade Yogurt

One half gallon skim milk (or whole, if you must)

Four tablespoons live yogurt as a starter

Four-quart stainless steel pot with aluminum base

Garbage bag ties

Aluminum foil

Two or more T-shirts or pillowcases

Buy milk in a cardboard carton — it will become your refrigerator storage container. Open top completely, so it looks like an open square. Pour milk into pot (don't use aluminum, it's reactive). The pot must have an extra-heavy aluminum bottom; plain stainless is thin and will burn yogurt. Bring milk to a near boil, so bubbles appear all around the edge. (If the milk comes to a full boil, don't worry — you'll still make yogurt. The danger is it will boil over and unremovable black burnt milk crud will stain your stove. Even that won't do anything except smell funny the next couple times you use the burner.)

When milk comes to near boil, remove pot from burner. Let cool till you can stick your little finger in the milk and count to 10 at normal speed. While you're waiting (about 15 minutes), put yogurt in cardboard carton. Twist the garbage bag ties together so they'll reclose the top. Spread aluminum foil on the rack of your oven (so milk won't drip on oven floor and burn). When milk is cool, pour it into container, stir gently, close with garbage bag ties, put container on foil, drape T-shirts around container, close oven. Depending on the weather, you'll have yogurt in three to eight hours. To get yogurt to commercial thickness, refrigerate for at least four hours. But yogurt existed for centuries without refrigeration.

You may have clear liquid on top of your yogurt. This is whey. There's nothing wrong with it, it's good for you. Stir it into the yogurt. Eat.

What Can Go Wrong?

Not much. If you use too much yogurt, say a whole cup, it grows too fast and kills itself. If the milk has cooled to room temperature, or is so hot it burns your finger, yogurt won't grow. Maybe your kitchen is colder than mine. Try again, and use more T-shirts. Most likely reason: the yogurt starter is dead. Yogurt culture is fragile. In my experience, all supermarket yogurt, even the stuff that says "contains live cultures," is dead. Buy your yogurt starter in a health food store. Biodynamic yogurts, like Seven Stars, are good. Erivan, the only 100 percent acidophilus yogurt, is best. Acidophilus yogurts are tangier and, some say, better for you. Erivan has tough long-lived germs!

Yogurt Cheeses

Take a clean dry pillowcase, washed in an unscented soap like Ivory, dump a half gallon of yogurt inside, and tie the bag over the faucet of your kitchen sink so that liquid drips out. Put a bowl underneath to capture the liquid (the whey). Let drip for three to eight hours, depending on whether you want creamy or dry cheese. Creamy style makes a great nonfat, low-cal, all-natural substitute for sour cream on baked potato. Dry cheeses can be mixed with herbs for homemade boursin. Madhur Jaffrey's Vegetarian Cooking has lots of recipes.

WARNING: Don't wash the pillowcase in laundry detergent or dry in the dryer. Cheer- or Bounce-flavored yogurt is repellent.

Goat milk, available in any health food store, makes great yogurt, and extremely good cheese. Goat boursin is an impressive party snack, especially when you shrug and say, "Oh, it's just a little cheese I make at home."

Don't throw away the whey. Use it to steam vegetables — you get buttery taste and zero butterfat. Whey makes any soup or stew taste richer, too. Just substitute for water.

Yogurt Sauces

Yogurt pasta sauces are so easy they aren't recipes at all.

Pesto Yogurt Sauce:

Make pesto. Boil pasta. Stir enough yogurt or yogurt cheese into pasta to make it look creamy. Serve. Top with pesto.

Rose Yogurt Sauce:

Make any favorite red sauce. Stir yogurt into cooked pasta, stir in red sauce. I use this sauce on the rare and tragic occasions when I run out of Parmesan, pepato and locatelli all at once. It's a low-cal nonfat cheese substitute.

Fat-free Cream Sauce (this requires a little more care):

Two tablespoons cornstarch

Two and a half cups yogurt

Put cornstarch in bowl, add one tablespoon water and mix. Add yogurt. Beat with a fork till smooth and creamy. Put mixture in a heavy stainless steel pan. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, stirring always in one direction. (I don't know what happens if you stir in two directions because I've never tried. I follow all goofball warnings on principle.) When yogurt begins to bubble, turn heat to low and cook five minutes, stirring gently — always in that same direction! Cook chopped mushrooms and fresh or frozen peas in this "cream sauce." Or scallops and/or shrimp. It's great on pasta.

Yogurt Drinks

One half cup skim-milk yogurt

One and a half cups ice-cold water

Flavoring (Apricot nectar or curry powder, etc., to taste)

Mix ingredients. Blend in a blender for three seconds. Apricot nectar or fruit juice makes an Indian drink called Sweet Lassi. Add fresh mint leaves instead and it's Persian Doogh. Add curry powder instead, and it's Salty Lassi. Or add Rajah brand Garam Masala, available in most supermarkets; you get a mild gingery cinnamon cardamom flavor, no salt at all, and a tasty, cheap, healthy, low-cal drink — at one-quarter the price of milk.