More yoghurt woes
29 December 2019 03:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe yoghurt saga has now reached the lengths of having its very own tag...
Yet more (relative) yoghurt failure, despite trying using an entire litre of milk and heating it not once but twice, very slowly; it's still warm in the flask when you open it after 12 hours or so, it appears set, comes away from the sides when you tilt it and has a little whey on top of it, but as soon as you let it flop out it turns into grainy, runny liquid. This time round I had a thick layer of set-looking yoghurt stuck to the bottom third of the flask, so I put the lid back on and shook it violently, which resulted in a second pot of thin but more 'creamy' liquid.
I do wonder if the problem is simply in getting the yoghurt out through the narrow neck of the flask, as I've never yet had a single success with this new flask - but I did have success on my very first attempt with the old one, and I doubt that was very much wider-necked. Edit: I had forgotten the nuisance value of trying to extract solid yoghurt through a narrow flask neck, and of trying to clean the inside of the flask afterwards -- rose-tinted spectacles? ;-)
I was actually going round the shops today tempted to buy a wide-mouthed food flask, as they had been reduced to only 11.99 instead of 24.99 -- but then I could have bought an entire 'Easiyo system' with starter sachets on sale in Lakeland for 9.99, the only disadvantage being that it's about four times the size. Bigger than my electric kettle. And so far as I can see, it's basically just a giant insulated flask that you fill with boiling water and then put your milk mixture inside -- I could do that in my old earthenware pot, aswatervole suggested months ago. It seems silly to go out and spend money when frankly I don't like yoghurt all that much; certainly not the sour and grainy stuff I'm getting at the moment. Maybe I should just give up until next summer.
I ploughed through a thousand or so posts on https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=717089 which suggest a variety of problems. They all use UHT milk ('fresh milk doesn't set'), they add extra milk powder to provide a thicker starting liquid, they say the bacillus dies after 5 days in the fridge (mine tends to be in there longer than that), they suggest using filtered water if you live in a hard water area, they claim that touching the milk with steel -- 'even a spoon' -- will stop it setting, and a cold kitchen will give problems. But then they are all talking about getting very thick and mild yoghurt as a result, which suggests that mine is definitely wrong. (Here's someone doing it in a food flask with a microwave and Sainsbury's dried milk powder -- although Sainsbury's have now discontinued that, locally at least...)
The irony is that I was getting perfectly successful yoghurt without doing any of these things, right up until I started using this flask in October -- in fact, looking back over old articles, I find a comment about succeeding in getting set yoghurt similar to that produced by the Thermos method! But all the flask is actually required to do is keep the yoghurt warm enough to let it breed, and it very definitely is succeeding in that - the result is still warm when it comes out. Still, I wonder if it's simply the change in room temperature, since in August it was seventy degrees overnight...
One interesting from the moneysavingexpert thread is that they suggest freezing starter cubes of commercial yoghurt in an ice cube tray so that you don't have to keep making it at five-day intervals. Another useful tip (from wartime cooking -- apparently 'domestic' milk was dried milk powder rather than fresh!) is that you should sprinkle the powder on top of the water and then whisk it, rather than trying to mix it up first with a very small quantity of water to avoid lumps; I haven't tried that yet. Or I could try investing in some UHT milk, which is cheaper than new equipment :-(
Yet more (relative) yoghurt failure, despite trying using an entire litre of milk and heating it not once but twice, very slowly; it's still warm in the flask when you open it after 12 hours or so, it appears set, comes away from the sides when you tilt it and has a little whey on top of it, but as soon as you let it flop out it turns into grainy, runny liquid. This time round I had a thick layer of set-looking yoghurt stuck to the bottom third of the flask, so I put the lid back on and shook it violently, which resulted in a second pot of thin but more 'creamy' liquid.
I do wonder if the problem is simply in getting the yoghurt out through the narrow neck of the flask, as I've never yet had a single success with this new flask - but I did have success on my very first attempt with the old one, and I doubt that was very much wider-necked. Edit: I had forgotten the nuisance value of trying to extract solid yoghurt through a narrow flask neck, and of trying to clean the inside of the flask afterwards -- rose-tinted spectacles? ;-)
I was actually going round the shops today tempted to buy a wide-mouthed food flask, as they had been reduced to only 11.99 instead of 24.99 -- but then I could have bought an entire 'Easiyo system' with starter sachets on sale in Lakeland for 9.99, the only disadvantage being that it's about four times the size. Bigger than my electric kettle. And so far as I can see, it's basically just a giant insulated flask that you fill with boiling water and then put your milk mixture inside -- I could do that in my old earthenware pot, as
watervole suggested months ago. It seems silly to go out and spend money when frankly I don't like yoghurt all that much; certainly not the sour and grainy stuff I'm getting at the moment. Maybe I should just give up until next summer.I ploughed through a thousand or so posts on https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=717089 which suggest a variety of problems. They all use UHT milk ('fresh milk doesn't set'), they add extra milk powder to provide a thicker starting liquid, they say the bacillus dies after 5 days in the fridge (mine tends to be in there longer than that), they suggest using filtered water if you live in a hard water area, they claim that touching the milk with steel -- 'even a spoon' -- will stop it setting, and a cold kitchen will give problems. But then they are all talking about getting very thick and mild yoghurt as a result, which suggests that mine is definitely wrong. (Here's someone doing it in a food flask with a microwave and Sainsbury's dried milk powder -- although Sainsbury's have now discontinued that, locally at least...)
The irony is that I was getting perfectly successful yoghurt without doing any of these things, right up until I started using this flask in October -- in fact, looking back over old articles, I find a comment about succeeding in getting set yoghurt similar to that produced by the Thermos method! But all the flask is actually required to do is keep the yoghurt warm enough to let it breed, and it very definitely is succeeding in that - the result is still warm when it comes out. Still, I wonder if it's simply the change in room temperature, since in August it was seventy degrees overnight...
One interesting from the moneysavingexpert thread is that they suggest freezing starter cubes of commercial yoghurt in an ice cube tray so that you don't have to keep making it at five-day intervals. Another useful tip (from wartime cooking -- apparently 'domestic' milk was dried milk powder rather than fresh!) is that you should sprinkle the powder on top of the water and then whisk it, rather than trying to mix it up first with a very small quantity of water to avoid lumps; I haven't tried that yet. Or I could try investing in some UHT milk, which is cheaper than new equipment :-(
