Cultural context: I’m old enough to have lived through the introduction and expansion of yogurt into North American dominant food culture. When I was a kid it was the weird-smelling white goop that looked enticingly like ice cream but tasted like sour milk. It was the last thing I would have ever wanted to eat. That it was a widely consumed food product elsewhere in the world and at the homes of Other™ people was inconceivable.
Fast forward a few decades. Far from being a hippie treat, yogurt is now a mass marketed food product available from a variety of brands in a variety of styles — mostly doused in sugar and fruit flavours. While palatable to me, it still seems a bit other-worldly and mysterious in its manufacture. And hard to find in plain form, I discover while scouring Ottawa’s Chinatown on a Sunday, in a desperate search for the stuff to complete a recipe for an impending dinner party.
I walk into Ottawa’s then only South Asian grocery store, figuring if anyone’s going to have it, the people who make Raita and dozens of spicy cream sauces definitely will. The store owner, seated atop what appeared to be a sandbag wall of sacks of white basmati scoffed at me when I ask: “We don’t sell that. Make it yourself.” Bewildered, I left.
Fast forward fifteen years again and it is the only thing I eat for breakfast. My then-partner is aghast at the waste of money and proliferation of plastic tubs in the tupperware drawer. She exhorts me to make my own. After I get over the wounded ego, I accept that she has a point and realize I am surprisingly well-placed to do so.
Years before this conversation I had purchased a food dehyrdator to pre-prepare meals for the canoe trips I do once or twice a year. Yes, you can purchase a purpose-built yogurt maker but they tend to produce small little pots of the stuff whereas I needed industrial volume.
How do you actually do it
“That’s all fascinating Chris, but how do you actually do it?” you ask. “Is it really that simple?”
Mostly.
- Get a few tablespoons of live culture yogurt as your starter. You have to check the ingredients list to make sure it’s still got the healthy, live bacteria in it. A lot of mass-produced yogurt is processed to the point where it won’t create anything.
- Get yourself some milk. I usually go for a four litre sack of milk bags. Because it’s as much work to make a little as it is a lot. And I’m lazy.
- Put it in a covered pot on your stove and scald it. This means using medium/low heat to the point where a ton of tiny bubbles start to form on the surface and putting your pinky finger in it yields a very painful sensation. Likely about 20 minutes. Do not forget about the pot as overheating milk makes a huge mess very quickly. The goal here is to obliterate any random or unwanted bacteria present in the milk. The heat does that.
- Leave the pot covered and wait for the scalded milk to cool. It’s cool enough if you can put both your hands on the outside of the pot for ten seconds without discomfort. The longer you let it cool, the more your bacteria will thrive and the thicker your yogurt will be so don’t be in a hurry here.
- When it’s cool enough, add your starter yogurt. The more the merrier, but if your plan is to do this for the long haul, consistency is key.
- Warm it up. For yogurt-making bacteria there’s a fine line between ‘cozy’ and ‘kill zone’. I set my dehydrator to 115° F. If you don’t have a dehydrator or a yogurt maker you might be able to use the warming drawer of your stove. Or leave it on a heat register, or your stove, or a warming light. Finding a good temperature is important. Too cool and it takes forever and never thickens. Too hot and you kill all the bacteria. I find that at 115° F, my steel pot with 4L of milk in it takes anywhere from 12 to 18 hours to properly ferment. I am trying be more consistent. For reelz.
What does it actually save?
Well first off, I have been using the same four 750ml plastic tubs for over a decade. So there’s that. The plastic milk bags are also a consideration, but I re-use those beyond what many would consider reasonable.
So four litres of milk costs $7 or thereabouts. That produces four 750ml tubs of yogurt. These cost anywhere from $4.00 to $8.50, depending on whether you go for the budget brand or boutique-y yogurts like Greek, Skyr. Anything organic and you’re in the $8 range. That’s me in my pre-yogurt making days. How much you save depends on how much you burn through in a month. For me it’s a lot. At least a tub a week. So five tubs a month, let’s say. If you buy the high end stuff, that’s $510 per year. To make it yourself costs $105.
Clearly making my own yogurt is not the only thing I need to do to secure a comfortable retirement. But it is a thing I do.