Growing yogurt

Last May, I spent three weeks in Turkey.  And with that trip, all of my sugary yogurt-laden days were ended.  Now the most I do to yogurt is drizzle a little honey or plop a little jam on top.  While traveling, it was available to me every day at breakfast and dinner - and I bought Ayran whenever I had a spare lira.  Sometimes I dream about Turkish breakfasts, so different from our American variety.  Cucumbers, tomatoes, bread, yogurt, jams galore, simit sometimes - and of course, Nescafe for coffee.

Since being home, I've dreamed about Turkey at least once a week.  Usually, I'm just passing through somewhere familiar or eating something delicious.  With all of the spare time I've had since graduating, I've been cooking a lot.  It started with the usual things: cookies, Mexican food, spaghetti squash...

Perfect Oatmeal-Mixed berry-Almond Cookies

Then - BAM - that cartoon light bulb flickered on above my head.  Surely Turkish food couldn't be any more difficult than any other food!  Almost immediately, last summer, I learned how to make my favorite vegetable staple, a cucumber and tomato chopped salad.  In between job searching and applications, I started looking for sites that could tell me how to make my favorite Turkish foods - and maybe some I'd never tried there, I thought, I could try here.  The excitement reached an all-time high when I remembered gozleme, which my boyfriend likes to call "Turkish hot pockets."  After some Americanization and experimentation with fillings, they're becoming a new favorite.  I can't wait to eat part of one for lunch!

Gozleme and Cucumber tomato salad

Then, by some providence, I clicked on a link that took me to a wonderful place.  Can you guess what it took me to?  I'll give you a few seconds to guess.
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Yogurt!  The idea of making yogurt had never occurred to me before, but I knew right then and there that I needed to do it.  Like any well-trained researcher (shout out to my historian friends), I watched videos, read countless articles, and then - when all was said and done - prayed for and dreamed of perfection.  This time, however, I wasn't hoping for a good grade, but a yummy yogurt - a much more satisfying end, I assure you.

Here's what you need if you want to make it like me:

-1/2 gallon milk

-individual container of yogurt with "live and active cultures"

-a large airtight vessel for incubation/fermentation

Here's what I did:
1) Pour the milk into a sauce pan to heat on a burner set to medium.  At this point, go ahead and take the yogurt out of the fridge - it needs to be room temperature when you use it as the starter.  Monitor the temperature of the milk with a thermometer (or, if you've boiled a lot of milk, until just under boiling) until it reaches 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is the contraption I made using a spoon handle, a clothes pin, and a meat thermometer because I don't have a candy thermometer.

I stirred almost the entire time and still wound up with some burned milk on the bottom, so I skimmed as much out as I could.

The milk near 180 degrees.  Just in case you need a guesstimate look!

2)  Remove the pan from heat and monitor the temperature until it gets down to around 115 degrees.  I actually poured my milk into another bowl because I was concerned about the burned milk.  As you can see, my thermometer only goes to 130, so I just guesstimated where 120 would be and guessed 115 accordingly.

Contraption number 2.

This takes a while.  Go watch a show or take a shower or apply to a job.  Return in half and hour or 45 minutes.

3)  Turn your oven on its lowest setting, which I hope is "warm."  Let it pre-heat.  This guy needs to incubate around 115 degrees.  Alternately for incubation, I've read that filling a cooler or crockpot with hot water and wrapping it all in towels works, though I used the oven.

Now for the fun part!  Although I didn't do this, I suggest stirring your yogurt container to break it up a bit before dumping it in the milk vat.  Dump it in, stir it up - I improvised with a spoon, though pretty much every recipe I read said "whisk."  Whichever, make sure it's smooth, with few lumps and bumps.

4)  Put the concoction into its vessel.  I had a lovely giant Ball jar, but any sealed heat-proof container should work just fine.  Pop on the lid.

5)  Now, say good-bye to your milk/yogurt goop for approximately 8 hours.  Put it in the oven, close the door, and turn the oven off.  A lot of recipes say to wrap it in towels, but I don't have any spares and my jar was so big the towels would have hit the coils and I really don't want to start a fire.  Don't open the door!

6)  Is it eight hours later?  Okay, you can open the door. Open the door!  Take it out, put it in the refrigerator.

When I reached this step, it was nearly 1 am and I was worried that I had too much whey - yeah, you'll get some of that nasty-looking yellowy stuff.  I was devastated.  I put it in a hot water bath, warmed the oven back up, and put it in again.  Then I started to think about it - for a half gallon, it wasn't that much whey.  Maybe it was just enough and I was - as usual - freaking out about nothing.  I ran back to the oven and took it out and stuck it in the fridge.

I didn't sleep well, worried, for the first time, about yogurt.  This morning, while trying to explain that I was almost afraid to get out of bed because I thought I'd messed up the yogurt, I was told, "Well, it looks like yogurt."  "I think there's too much whey!"  "You used a lot of milk..."

7)   Open the fridge.  Gaze at the yogurt vessel.  Take it out.

Tell me this doesn't look a little gross at first.

Because of my (now obviously) irrational worry in the wee hours of the morning, I drained the whey to see how much there was.

I was worried about 5 ounces of whey coming out of 64 ounces of milk and 6 ounces of yogurt.  I laughed!

I actually added some back in for flavor, but have some left.

8)  Eat it!

I added some honey before I thought to take a picture of the consistency, which is a little runny, but it tastes good.  I wonder if it would be different with whole milk or how added powdered milk would affect the tanginess, which is a little lacking for me.

Now, the sites tell me there are so many things I can do with this - make cheese, Greek yogurt, sauces, dressings, etc. - but I'm about 99.9% sure I'll just eat the yogurt and make some more next week, making sure to save just enough to be "starter" then.

I grew yogurt.  If I can, you can!





Reflection:
I'm curious as to how my great grandmother would have reacted to my using one of her canning jars to make yogurt in.  I also can't help but think of how much Nana would have gone after me for using a blue Ball jar for something not artsy/crafty/decorating, but for food.  I remember antique-hunting with her for these as a kid.  I'm really nervous I'm going to break it, but I'm thankful my butter-fingers have gotten less greasy with age.  To a long and happy life filled with delicious yogurt!