Lots on crockpot yogurt-making...and some grocery thoughts

Found through a friend of a friend: The Sweetbriar Patch took Steph's Crockpot Yogurt instructions from A Year of SlowCooking, and did a series of posts about her tweaks, improvements, and great discoveries. I was also impressed by her Grocery Shopping Philosophy, and her New Year's post about Vigilance.

Making yogurt--again

I've been pretty happy with the yogurt I've been making this year. I like the way it usually turns out, I think the heating-pad method works well, and I like not having to depend on store yogurt.

However, there have been a couple of things that bug me about the way I've been doing it--one is cleaning the pint canning jars afterwards. When you use this method of heating, cooling and incubating right in the jars, they do get a bit hard to clean. Besides, most of our jars now are full of jam. Mr. Fixit has remembered all the tricks his grandma taught him and so far we have two different kinds of jam in the cold room, with the promise of peach as well when they come into season.

I had loaned out my Tightwad Gazette Volume 3--the one with the yogurt instructions in it--and when it came back recently I thought I'd look back at that article and see if there was any way I could improve on my two-little-jars method.

So today I did it the TG way--heated up a quart of milk plus milk powder in the pot, and tried one idea of my own: I incubated it in a covered serving bowl that came with our dinnerware (with the cover on, in case that wasn't clear). I checked it just before posting this and it's already done--looks like it worked great. And the pot wasn't hard to clean either. I think I've solved both my messy-jar and lack-of-jars problems at the same time. (And it's a bit less dangerous than lifting those jars of hot milk.)

One interesting note, if you find this much technical stuff interesting: you have to let the milk heat to 180 or 185 degrees, then cool it to 115 degrees before stirring in yogurt and incubating it. Usually I lift the jars of hot milk out of the pot of water and let them cool for awhile on a towel--and usually it does take awhile. This time I poured all the milk into the bowl instead. (I had poured boiling water over the bowl first, just to make sure it was really clean.) I don't know if it was the bowl, or the fact that I left the whisk sitting in the milk as well (some kind of heat exchange?), but that had to be the fastest-cooling milk I've ever seen. Usually we're talking half an hour anyway; this batch was down to 115 degrees within 15 minutes.

Just give me a white coat, I feel like a lab scientist.

Boy, this WAS a good day (yogurt making)

I haven't been making yogurt much lately, although I had had some success with Seabird Chronicles' method. I would have a good batch, then a couple of so-so ones; and in between I had to clean the pint canning jars I made it in (yuck). With a bottle brush. (Have to get me some wide-mouth jars.)

OK, enough whining?

Anyway, I think part of the problem with inconsistent yogurt results might just be the kind of yogurt used as a starter. I've always tried to get natural brands (I know yogurt with additives won't work well), but as I said I've had varying degrees of success. I bought some Perth County brand yogurt last week (sorry, that one's just for Ontarians), liked the taste, and froze some to use as starter. I made a batch today and it's probably the best-textured, least slimy or strange, most acceptable yogurt-that's-like-yogurt I've made in a long time. I don't THINK I did anything different--just followed Seabird's instructions and let it set on a heating pad for about six hours--took the jars out and let them chill in the fridge for awhile before I dumped them out into a larger container (maybe that helped too).

Or maybe the very strange weather we've had (cold, hot, thunderstorms, sunshine, bouncing back and forth), that's played havoc with all my baking lately, is good at least for yogurt making.

Success! Yeah!

P.S. Crayons calls the heating pad "the yogurt maker." I explained that it wasn't actually designed for that, that some people actually use a heating pad for sore backs. She thought that was very funny.

"I have a woeful feeling, as if the double O of doom were sticking in my throat."

From the ongoing discussion about Big Words (of course some people would call it just blog chatter, since we're all supposed to be non-professionals not entitled to consider these things):

The Deputy Headmistress weighs in again on all of this, and mentions a high-ranking clergyman who says (in big words) that he would like to simplify church language for the rest of us.

"Why is he allowed words the rest of us aren't? Is it because they taste yucky, so we won't like them anyway?"

Ah! I love it, it makes so much sense. Not that any of us believe in a conspiracy to limit our language or turn us all into Alphas, Betas...Epsilons...

The DHM's reference to "yucky" refers to a motherly deception she once tried to keep one of her offspring from asking for the pop she was drinking. (She is very, very sorry now and will never do it again.) It reminds me of some friends of ours who used to give their toddler plain yogurt while they were eating ice cream. It worked--until he got old enough to notice that there was a difference! (And it NEVER worked when the younger ones came along.)

And goodness knows I do like yogurt myself--I have some yogging on the heating pad as we speak. But speaking strictly in terms of "something somebody else has that's better than what you've been given"--is it possible that we've been gradually slipped more and more yogurt in place of the Vanilla Chocolate Chip that might give us ideas about Mocha Almond Fudge or even White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle?

Like our toddler friend (who's now an almost Goliath-sized teenager), demand your semantic rights as loudly as you can, and be a voice for the vocabulary-impaired.

"Black showed his teeth and made a restless gesture. 'Taking a single letter from the alphabet,' he said, 'should make life simpler.'

"'I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.'"--James Thurber, The Wonderful O

Yogurt-making trick

I made yogurt yesterday and wanted to pass on something that's working for me.

I've been an on-again, off-again yogurt maker for years, trying directions from some of my favourite frugal people: The Tightwad Gazette, The Common Room, The Hillbilly Housewife. I've had mixed results using different incubation methods including a quickly-turned-off electric oven--we didn't own a heating pad until this year (we found a brand-new one at a yard sale).

But recently I found a way that clicked for me and does produce very eatable yogurt. The Sea-bird Chronicles posted the idea of heating the milk right in the jar, in a big pot of water. No messy pot to clean up, no burnt milk, not as much hovering--when the water starts bubbling, it's time to check the temperature of the milk as well. I used two pint jars instead of one large one because that's what I had--just divided up the extra milk powder and starter (frozen yogurt cubes) between the two jars after the milk cooled a bit. Then I left the jars for six hours on the heating pad, and voilà.

The other different thing I'm doing--for the time being--is using regular 2% milk rather than trying to make yogurt entirely from powdered milk. Maybe I'll try that again once I've had a few more successful from-fresh batches and I know I'm not doing anything else wrong--but the last just-powdered batch I made was runny and sticky. :-& And what we have now is really pretty good. So if it's not broke...