Over the past few weeks, I’ve been inspired by my friends J & E to make yogurt.
J uses a specific brand of yogurt from the supermarket, mixes it into the milk and lets it sit on the counter overnight and gets slightly runny yogurt.
E who I heard from first, but uses a crockpot – which I don’t have, has a more difficult method. It also needed a thermometer that I didn’t have at the time.
First, I decided to try J’s method. Perhaps it was our milk or the fact that the weather had begun to turn colder, but it was too runny for my taste and just wouldn’t thicken up.
Next, I tried E’s method with my rice cooker. In the morning I woke up to a cold rice cooker with a slightly thicker than milk yogurt. I turned the heat back on, to warm it up, and let it sit for the day. When I got home it was a better texture, but not as thick as I wanted. So, I made “greek” yogurt and strained it. It had a really odd flavor that I didn’t like.
I realized though, that when it’s not actively heating, the rice cooker isn’t built to keep things warm for a while.
Based on all of that, today I’m trying it again in my Nabe pot.
Here’s the milk after I warmed it up and then cooled it enough to add starter.
Here’s the fork removing the “skin” that had developed on the top of the milk.
And now, my yogurt mixture has been bundled up for the night. We’ll see what happens in the morning!
