BB on GOOD: "Fast People, Slow Food - Better Living Through Homemade Yogurt"
The Boing Boing editors have been having fun with some guest-writing over at GOOD, and my latest contribution has just been published. It involves NOM. Here's a snip:
When the economy took a nosedive, I did the same thing a lot of other Americans did: I looked at my household expenses and my lifestyle with newly frugal eyes, and began thinking about costs and personal priorities in new ways. That included food.Read the rest of the essay here, with step-by-step HOWTO. Photo courtesy Flickr user (cc) Biology Big BrotherRethinking what I cook and eat post-econopocalypse meant simpler, slower food; a more local and traditional diet which, in fact, makes good sense in any economic weather. But I live an urban life. I spend a lot of time online or working in short attention bursts. I don’t have a lot of time to cook or prepare food, and my city apartment doesn’t afford room to raise goats or grow tomatoes.
Despite this, I’ve gradually eased into a number of new rituals and good habits that reduced my grocery bill and make me feel happier and healthier. One of them is making yogurt each week. It takes maybe 20 minutes of actual work and attention, zero equipment beyond stuff I already had in my kitchen, and yields a yummier, healthier, and yes, “probiotic” product that costs five to 10 times less than the store-bought stuff.
Here are the basics of rolling your own yogurt the lazy Xeni way...
(Special thanks to my co-editor, BB founder Mark Frauenfelder, for putting the yogurt bug in my head, so to speak.)
- Boing Boing on GOOD: "DIY Funerals and the Quest for Authenticity ...
- GOOD: Lake Mead is drying up
- Boing Boing on GOOD - Dahomey Diary: Notes from Benin (Xeni ...
- Boing Boing on GOOD: "All the Web's A Stage"
- Boing Boing on GOOD: You Are Your Data - Boing Boing
- Boing Boing on GOOD: "My Ecologically Correct Move." - Boing Boing
- Boing Boing on GOOD: A Mayan Village Reacts to Obama - Boing Boing
- Boing Boing on GOOD: Digital TV Now! - Boing Boing
- Boing Boing posts on GOOD! - Boing Boing
the latest
latest episodes
Xeni really gets it - this is so simple and much fresher than anything you can buy in the store. I use a large Ball canning jar and a half gallon of milk...a food thermometer makes me feel like Ms. Scientist and I swaddle the jar in a bath towel and leave it on the kitchen counter during the setting period, then right into the fridge.
If you like doing this you may also consider making your own kefir. I enjoy kefir with a lot of spearmint, yummy.
I make yogurt pretty much the same way. I have to use a thermometer though; I get a little OCD about food temps.
The economy has definitely caused me to increase my intake of squirrel and pigeon meat.
This is a really great idea, plus you can usually find those little plastic incubators at a garage sale. Much better taste, more complex flavor when used as a marinade and less likely to break in a sauce.
We used the same setup to grow up yeast slants when I worked in a brewpub.
I started making yogurt at home a few months ago and was amazed how easy it was. I make a batch about once a week, and keep frozen mango in the freezer so I can have a lassi whenever I want. If I'm really feeling crazy, I'll stir a spoon full of jam into some yogurt... I never really liked fruity yogurt before, but with the homemade it's really tangy and you can control the sugar. Perfect. I'm experimenting with using the whey in pickling, but am still honing that skill.
I'm a real food nut myself and do lot's of homemade stuff:
Did sauerkraut for the first time this year, it was awesome:
http://www.wildfermentation.com/resources.php?page=sauerkraut
Of course baking bread is dirt cheap and really easy. I usually make 2-4 loaves slice and freeze them. Then just toast them up. This no-knead recipe is supposedly a classic and really easy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html
This weekend I am doing a slow cooked pork shoulder that turns out as good as any BBQ.
I don't really do this stuff to save $ I just do it cause it tastes so much better.
Making yogurt from storebought milk seems strange to me, for some reason.
That's nothing. In my kitchen I make my own penicillin.
2 words. ramen noodles.
stop overthinking eating cheap, college students have done it for years. bakeries will sell you day old stuff for cheap or free, buy cheap ramen noodles 5 for $1, and buy in bulk for anything else.
My family did it for a while. We found that it was about 20 minutes work for a quart of yogurt, and we'd save maybe $1-$1.50 per quart (brown cow plain quart @ 2.79, vs a gallon of milk at $6.50 + honey + vanilla). Yeah, it's a savings, but it's nowhere near 5-10x.
my mother (an indian immigrant) has been doing this my entire life...you don't have to be so nit-picky about everything though. essentially, you boil milk, let it cool enough so you can stick your finger in it and call it "warm", pour it into a container/bowl that has already a whisked spoon of starter culture in it, cover, let sit in warm place. as of late my mom has been heating up the microwave for a minute (empty!) and then putting in her bowl of yogurt. she leaves it there all night and in the morning sticks it in the fridge. works beautifully every time.
@ ANONYMOUS #11, yes packaged ramen is cheap, but it is an extremely unhealthy food, and a poor source of nutrition. Freeganism and buying "old" items to save money are concepts well-known to me, and good to talk about, but this simple experiment is a different thing.
@ ANONYMOUS #11, the "5 to 10 times" reference came from calculating the cost of those tiny single-serving yogurts. $1.50 per unit for some of them!
As others have said here, though, it's not really all about the total dollars saved. It's about having a delicious, higher-quality, healthier food. And it's kinda fun to make.
@ ANONYMOUS #12, indeed, the point of the essay was largely to share the excitement I found at realizing how non-nitpicky this is. Doesn't take fancy equipment, and you can sort of wing it with a basic understanding of what will and will not produce a proper "set." Your mom's method sounds not too different from my own, other than the fact she's using a microwave and I'm using a gas or electric oven.
Anon #8
I guess ideally everyone would be making yogurt from their own personal goats, but if you can't do that, store-bought milk, organic or not, is a reasonable compromise. Even fancy organic yogurts have stabilizers and additives, and when you make it at home you can adjust it to suit your tastes. Me, I like to strain it just a little and I use the (very nutritious) whey in other cooking.
I've been making yogurt for a couple weeks -- since that NYTimes article that Xeni references came out -- and it's completely delicious. The one additional thing I do is to strain it after it has incubated (I use the oven with the pilot light as well).
Straining it is really easy: just put a piece of cheesecloth or some other useful cloth -- I had a square from an old sheet -- in a colander, the colander over a bowl, and pour the yogurt into the cloth. Leave it there for an hour or so, and you will delicious thick yogurt. The yogurt is just as thick and even better tasting that Fage Greek yogurt.
Also you get to drink the whey, which is green with riboflavin, and is very refreshing shaken up with a bit of sugar and ice.
Really, I was amazed that the very first time I did it, with no fancy equipment, I got yogurt that was better tasting and just as thick as the fancy Greek yogurts I used to eat. Much cheaper too -- a quart of fancy organic milk costs about $2.60 here, and makes more yogurt (after straining) than a container of Fage or similar brand, which costs over $4 and doesn't use organic milk.
I do this about every other weekend, too. Get a $10 double-boiler and a $5 candy thermometer, makes it much quicker and easier.
I add a little sweetener as it's cooling down, put it on a heating pad, and cover with a towel for 8 hrs. Chill, then blend it with fruit. Yep, it's hard to screw up.
Does anyone know if this method works with all the other lactobacteria, like the bifidus genera, L. Casei Imunitass, etc?
Regarding straining it, I find that a coffee filter is less of a pain than cheesecloth. YMMV.
The whey is also good for baking. I've been told it's good as a drink with mint too. It's definitely a good drink sans mint; I'll have to try it with the mint. For my palate, no sugar is needed.
I use a water bath and a modified aquarium heater, and results have always been perfect. See "The Yogurt Diaries" in http://blog.robertpoor.com/ for a bunch of things that work (and a few that don't!).
- fearless
If you're _REALLY_ serious about saving money, you should be putting out your pilot light when you're not using it to light the stove, just leaving it burning is wasteful.
Also, yes #5 - i don't own any large bowls that i'd want to shove into my pots, Yogurt makers can be found at garage sales for pennies.
Can't sign in for some reason, but my two cents: Apparently if you keep using your previous batch as a starter then the ratio of biological critters starts to drift, since one species may reproduce faster than thew other. This can affect the taste.
poshhonky, i love your nym.
It's my understanding that those other lactobacteria would not cause the milk to "set" in the same way that the two cited do. That's why every brand of commercial yogurt uses them. But maybe you can add others, I'm not clear.
Maybe some more knowledgeable folks here, or the websites I linked to at the bottom of the essay, would have that answer.
Whoa, serendipity! I've just (this week and last) been making quark cheese, which is a very similar process. I dimly remembered quark from a junior-high German class half my life ago, and felt like making some. It's a crazy-awesome acid-set fresh cheese that is very NOMNOMNOM and pretty damned good for you, lots of protein, probiotic, low-fat, etc.
I've tried two quark recipes now, one with rennet (for a cream cheese-like consistency) and one without (for a sour cream consistency, or slightly drier). It makes an awesome substitute since both those items are like 90% fat and quark is mostly protein and IMHO even more delicious.
My friend made some rhubarb cheesecake with my cream-cheese-ish quark: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aprille/3518269217
This is what the cream cheese-ish quark looks like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackpinette/3510679490
I definitely recommend trying to make quark! It's even easier than yogurt, in fact.
I've also made European-style cultured butter and an ersatz creme fraiche at home. Yay cultured milk products!
I also think things like homemade quark or yogurt are a pretty good way to introduce people to slow food ideals. You would not catch me vegetable gardening or raising livestock, I'm a fat lazy bastard and not a good cook at all, and I would not have guessed I'd be so worked up about this stuff now. But making things like quark is so easy and rewarding that it has led me to think more deeply about how *all* of my food is made, how my local dairies operate, what those ingredient lists actually mean, etc.
@flwombat, f'n awesome comment! Thank you so much, and to everyone else who replied with their own personal anecdotes or recipes, this is so much fun!
Quark cheese? What a strange and charming idea! I bet you're on top of your game by the time you get to the bottom of the cup. Thanks for writing it down and putting it up!
I've been making youghurt for around a year now (we also our own bread.. well the breadmaker does). I use one of those incubator youghurt makers. I use half a pack of starter yoghurt mix with 500mls warm water and 500mls UHT milk. Then bung in the incubator thing with some boiling water on the outside and 8 hours later youghurt! It takes about 5 minutes of preparation, and ends up costing around one third the price of the equivalent amount of store-bought yoghurt :)
I put in around half a teaspoon of liquid artificial sweetner and divide into six little containers with a teaspoon of jam in each for flavour. Then they sit in my fridge all ready to add to my lunchbox :)
i don't get that "no time to cook or prepare meals" thing.
20-25 minutes is usually enough for most lunches, 15 for dinners. add a few minutes for a breakfast toast and preparing sandwiches, and that's less than 1 Oprah show.
the best part is that most meals take about the same time to prepare double portions, so you can save the rest for later, on those rare occasions when you really don't have the time.
Two words: Powdered Milk. This is how you really save money.
Using it results in a product that is as good as using fresh milk does (or in my opinion, based on thickness, better). I usually use double the amount of powder required by the instructions to make the milk (I use low fat, normal might end up being too rich - I haven't tried it).
@20 this is my understanding too. I made yoghurt for my son every day for a couple of years wen he was on the specific carbohydrate diet for his Crohn's disease. Their advice was to buy a small pot of bio-active yoghurt as a starter every few batches, because you can inadvertently introduce new things very easily in the process, and using leftover from a previous batch every time (as my grandmother did) may build up the contamination in the yoghurt.
The advantage of making your own, particularly for those with allergies and problems with digesting lactose, is that you can deveop the yoghurt for longer and therefore ensure there is very little lactose left in the yoghurt.
We used to use frozen banana and other fruits whizzed up with home made yoghurt for a wonderful frozen yoghurt.
For those in the UK, Lakeland Plastics produce a cheap yoghurt maker, and they also make good strainers for it too, which are like plastic coffee filters. However, as someone pointed out, yoghurt making being something that is often a craze for a few months and then abandoned, they come up in car boot sales and jumble sales too.
Fee
I've been mixing the yogurt vigorously after 5-6h of fermentation (wrapped up in a duvet) to get rid of clumps and smooth it out a bit. After refrigeration, the texture is very homogeneous and creamy. Also, if you can get milk that has been microfiltered and not homogenized, this contributes greatly to a thick, pleasant texture ― see here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcsi/3487565411/
I make yoghurt by heating up milk just above body temperature and adding a bit of natural yoghurt. Put it in a thermos flask over night. Perfect. No messing.
Unfortunately no matter how it's produced, it still ends up as yogurt.