Here is link to a few prior post on yoghurt: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/kindly-help-with-this-nutrition-quiz.143164/#post-3250791 This post tells how I make yoghurt very quickly and how you can start to: (1) Select glass storage container with large plastic lid that will fit inside your microwave. My jar hold two liters with ease. Clean it well and then put about a table spoon of clean water in it with lid not fully tightly screwed on. In less than three minutes of microwaving most of the H2O will have become steam, venting thru the slightly loose lid. Learn how long to microwave most, but not all, of the H2O out - not good for your microwave to run it with no load. When jar is cool enough to handle, swirl remaining water around to collet tiny drops of condensate on the inner walls and loosen top a little more to drain water out. Air will have replaced steam inside and be sterile from contact with the hot walls, so when water is gone, screw lid on tight. Don't open again until ready to add starter yoghurt and sterile milk. If making subsequent batch using remains of last batch as starter, none of this is required. Just take jar out of refrigerator to let it warm some while making new milk of next batch sterile. (2) Sterilize milk, whole or skimmed as desired. I use free powered whole milk (see link at top as why I get it free) and carefully , slowly add it the heating water; about 20% less water than is recommended for re-constituting milk, gives thick "Greek yoghurt" that will barely pour out of the jar. Lots of stirring to avoid wet lumps. Two forks used. One to catch any lumps in the swirling water and other to smash them. Metal pot should be at most half filled as when it boils, level of milk foam will quickly rise up. Stirring also keeps bottom from getting slightly burnt milk film. When near boiling place pot's metal lid over most of pot so heat sterilize its inter surface too. Watch for boiling foam rise via not completely closed sector. When seen - quickly turn off gas or move pot from electric stove's burner and cover completely with lid. (3) Pot will be too hot to touch, so do so with gloves or towel. Place it in larger tube with water to quickly cool. My tube is plastic dish washing bowl. After a few batches you will know how much tap water needs to be in that tub, to cool metal pot down just enough so you can firmly touch it with bare hands. That temperature, T, is 33C < T < 38C but do not contaminate milk with thermometer to measure it. (4) Remove lid from storage jar. Placing it on inner section of new clean, never touched, paper towel to not contaminate it. If new commercial starter is being used (not remains of last batch) carefully remove top foil, and drop all the bought yoghurt into jar. Squeeze* its plastic cup and shake into jars (why a wide jar lid was needed). Do not use "clean" spoon because it ain't germ free. Then pour about half the warm milk in and screw jar lid on tight. Shake jar well so starter yoghurt is well mixed into the just added warm milk. Open jar again and add rest of warm milk. You should have made just enough warm milk to nearly fill the jar. Replace lid but not completely tightly as CO2 produced as the milk becomes yoghurt need path to escape. (5) Set jar on double layer of towel and wrap it entirely up in more towels to keep it warm for a few hours. Peek in only after four hours to see if all is going well. (Tilt jar slightly to confirm milk is no longer liquid.) Wrapped jar can sit on table over night if you stared making after dinner in the evening. Never spoon your yoghurt out of jar. Pour it out as you use it. Wipe any left on rim with inner surface of never touched paper towel (or toilet paper roll with only this use.) Both are the most sterile things in your house. They were bleached with acid and made with automation in huge batches - never touched by any hand. (6) Between uses, keep refrigerated. If you are careful to keep all very sterile, you will be able to start next batch with less than 5% of last batch four or five times before your yoghurt starts to grow a little tart / sour. It is good to eat still. * I have corn sticker that is missing one prong. If store's yoghurt will not shake out, I flame sterilize the metal tip, and punch a tiny air hole in the bottom (actually the side very near bottom is thinner) to let air in. Immediately the yoghurt falls out in one mass - so prick the plastic cup over the open yoghurt jar.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I made my own yogurt for years (used non-fat powdered milk)... but stoped when the price of milk went up so much that it was cheeper to buy yogurt than make my own.!!! I heated 5 quarts of milk at a time in the microwave... an used a food dehydrater that was big enuff to incubate 5 quarts at a time.!!! I liked it a bit tart... an it was thick enuff that a spoon woud stand up in it.!!!
I find it very strange you can not make with powdered milk for less than half the cost of commercial yoghurt. In Brazil powdered milk is less than half the cost of whole milk, but mine being free, lets 2 liters of yoghurt cost less than 5% of price of one can of coke - and is 500% better for me/ per serving! As told earlier, I get at least 8 liters (four batches) from each small cup of commercial starter yoghurt required. From your photo, you seem to make many small (one serving) yoghurt cups. My batches are all in one big jar. Were you using about 25% less water than recommended for re-constituting the powered stuff into milk? - Mine is so thick it would stand a spoon too, but I never put one in to my 2 liter jar of yoghurt. Last batch, made with ~20% less than recommended re-constitution water is so thick I must shake hard to get any to come out of the jar.
Raw oats are very cheap, when bought in bulk. No package to pay for and "brandless" so no money was wasted on adds. In Brazil they cost less than a dollar per pound and as they are dry, that is a big volume /$. I never cook them, but do chop them fine in my blinder to make about a week's supply at a time. Remainder is stored in metal cans with tight fitting lids. They are used to start and end the day: After dinner desert is small bowl of them, with dry, sugar free chocolate powder, a little water and about same amount of honey to off-set chocolate's bitter taste, all mixed into a paste. Bananas are cheap in Brazil. As Carman Miranda's song said: "The've got an awful lot of banana in Brazil." You can even seen them growing wild along rural roads sometimes. In fact the way a salesman tells you how good a deal he is offering sometimes is to say: "That is only the price of bananas!" My breakfast is always one banana, microwaved for one minute, then smothered with raw oats with some of my yoghurt poured over all. A couple of "glugs" from liter bottle of soy oil is poured on top and stirred in to make a soft paste. Everyone should avoid saturated fats (they are solid at room temperature) especially from animals, but be sure to injest at least a few table spoons of liquid oil daily. (Olive oil is best for health, but only slightly better than soy and cost at least 5 times more.) Dinner or lunch is often from my multi-meal made food cooked in my wok. More on cooking with wok later. Wife and I eat more than pound of fruit each day (me a little more than half as "Your bigger" she notes.) Brazil has wide verity of fruits available all year. Oranges, apples, pears, grapes, mangos, manão, melons*, are eaten almost daily, but one or two from this list will not be used each day. None are costly, but price does vary so less of the more expensive that week may not be purchased in my weekly trip to the store. (Large discounts are on Wednesdays, when I buy for the week.) Each week I buy 2 kilos of chicken breast. I use some in my wok and rest is with potatoes (or often majorca, a very tasty cheap long root, instead), carrots, a few onions all cooked in big pot for several meals. Fish makes up rest of animal protein eaten, except for a few boiled eggs. I eat some beans & rice, the main food of the poor. - A balanced food with some protein content, a few times each week. * Brail has cantaloupes, smaller round balls, but not nearly as tasty as in US and "honey dews" don't seem to exist here. Our melons are sometimes part of a water melon (store sells halves) or more commonly one a little bigger than US's cantaloupe whose name translates as "frog's skin" because it looks like that. We buy mainly it because, my cockatiel (bird, Sunshine by name) prefers its seeds even over water melon's. Sunshine is a very discriminating gourmet. Eats only one brand of bread and then only if it is warmed, but not toasted. That with all the salt she can lick from salt filled holes on top of salt shaker is her breakfast, eaten with us, but only she, walks on the kitchen table.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I mixed the non-fat powdered milk wit about 75% less water... an that container in the photo is 1 quart.!!! I used the yogurt i made as starter for the next 2 or 3 batches... an after that buy a quart of store bout yogurt--use part of it as starter an eat the rest.!!! I buy steel cut oats in bulk... but i cook 'em... enuff for 4 days an have it for breakfast wit whole wheat bread i make.!!! Sometimes the fruit here is very good... but most of the time lucky to get average tastin fruit.!!!
I think you mean: 25% less water than "recommended for re-constitution of milk" or "only 75% of the recommended water" - both the same, just different words and in agreement with my guess of what you did to get "spoon standing thick" yoghurt. I think you are using more starter than you need to and that is why you have little or no cost advantage over commercial yoghurt. It will, even with exponential growing, take little longer for the yoghurt bacteria to convert all the milk. Even wrapped in towels to keep warm, and thus faster division, it can take 5 hours for my milk to all become yoghurt. Here in Brazil, the standard store cup holds only 170 grams. My 2 liter batch is about 2000 grams and I always get a total of at least 8,000 grams. - I.e. with free powdered milk my yoghurt cost is 8000/170 = 470 times less than buying at the store. Even if I had to buy powdered milk my yoghurt would be 100 times cheaper than buy those small cups of yoghurt. Store bought yoghurt is several times more expensive than same volume of milk, which is sold by the 1 or 2 liter volume not just 170 grams, with Al foil top. Buy the least expensive (smallest) yoghurt you can and expand its volume in very first batch by factor of ~25 to bring cost way down. Brazilian powdered milk is only about 1/3 the cost of whole fresh milk and low fat milk is even more expensive than whole milk - too little demand for butter and other milk fat products I guess. First time I ate "steel cut" oats was last June in USA. I did not cook them - so chewing was tough the first breakfast. After it, I soaked them over night in the refrigerator to soften them up some, but still ate them raw. A friend told me they are more nutritious. If true, they must be different type of oat. They may be available in some Brazilian specialty food stores, but not in the big one I use. Brazil's corn is very inferior - hard as the steel cut oats - only fit for horses, but not too bad when bought from a street vender who has been simmering the corn is big pot for hours.
I didnt have a blender at the time... so i woud run raw steel cut oats an raisins thru a food processor an then mix that wit peanut butter an freeze it--an then cut it into small bars for a cool treet... but sometimes i didnt process it enuff an woud crunch down on a steel cut oat... an it was about like crunchin down on a hunk of glass... so i hand it to you... bein able to eat raw steel cut oats Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I now use all-bran-cereal.. raisins an peanut butter for my frozen treet.!!!
