Probiotics What?! - Sous Vide Yogurt

Super cool way to make yogurt!  If you have a sous vide device, of course... 

I mean, who needs probiotics if you actually know what they are? If you eat yogurt at all, or naturally fermented pickles or sauerkraut or any cultured foods, you are getting probiotics in a totally natural way. And yes, that includes yogurt!

I love making homemade yogurt and as you may have guessed from some of my previous posts, I am especially fond of gadgets and cooking tools.

I've used several yogurt making tools in the past but when I moved to Florida, the bottom heating element of my favorite yogurt maker got lost somehow in the move.

No big deal, I thought. As I have my YoLife non electric thermos yogurt maker, I knew I wouldn't really have to do without. My Euro Cuisine yogurt maker was great, but still... just couldn't quite find it justifiable to buy another uni-purpose kitchen tool. Getting more practical in my culinary old age and even more particular when it comes to storing bulky tools in my limited kitchen space. Let's face it, no matter how big your kitchen is, if you love to cook, your space is always limited.

When it comes to making good quality yogurt, it is as simple as this: you must start with good quality yogurt and good quality whole milk. No way around it. And therein lies it's most rewarding feature. You can use virtually ANY good quality yogurt you like as long as it has active yogurt cultures. In fact, reading a label should be quick because it should really only have one ingredient: cultured dairy. Cultured dairy is actually comprised of two ingredients. Dairy (milk or cream) and live active cultures. Often, the active cultures will be explicitly labeled as well.

When choosing yogurt as a starter, I'm a purist in this regard. Not to mention, I'm not a fan of artificial anything... not a fan of preservatives, additives to alter coloring or artificial flavorings of any kind. But that is a personal preference to be sure. I suppose it bears mentioning though, that if you want the benefits of probiotics you need to dispense with the artificial sugars, additives and preservatives, etc. Defeats the purposes of probiotics in the diet, which is to course correct the over indulgence all of us have for processed foods containing sugars and all the bad juju associated with today's modern illnesses, including obesity. Do your gut a favor and go as natural as you can, from time to time.

For the sake of this blog post, I am referring to dairy yogurts made from milk.  I have made other types of non-dairy yogurt for the paleos out there, but really, my heart always comes back to whole milk yogurts.

If your yogurt contains additives or preservatives or flavorings or gelatins or thickening agents like guar gum, etc. just leave it on the shelf... It won't produce a clone of the original product no matter what you do and you may be inclined to think it is harder than it really is or that you've done something wrong.  Trust me on this, you haven't done anything wrong. But for the sake of replicating your favorite yogurt, your yogurt choice matters. After all, who can replicate unnatural manufactured yogurt with an indefinite shelf life? Yogurt is a fresh product and the fewer, natural ingredients involved, the more likely you are to replicate it to perfection... Yogurt is alive. You know you have the right one if it contains 2-3 natural dairy ingredients and ACTIVE or LIVE cultures.

In order to replicate yogurt indefinitely, you need to think of it the same way as you think of other cultured and fermented products. Cultured products need to be fed. Like sourdough... If you've ever worked with sourdough starters, the concept is exactly the same. The culture or starter needs to be fed regularly in order to multiply and culture the newly added fresh ingredients. You add more flour and water to a sourdough starter and the starter feeds on the fresh ingredients, culturing the new ingredients to make more sourdough. If done well, the cultures can live almost indefinitely.

The way this works in yogurt is much the same way.  You take a starter yogurt, such as Dannon whole fat plain yogurt, add fresh whole milk to this and leave it for 12-24 hours to culture the new milk.  That's it.

Well, almost.  The reason there is no finite time is that everyone's environment and kitchen temperature is different. In days of old, yogurt was made by heating yogurt in a thick vessel designed to retain the heat and then left overnight or up to a day to culture.

The reason for this, and I won't go into extraordinary detail (or I guess I already have :) is because yogurt is a mesophilic culture. What does that mean??? Well, it means it cultures at a medium temperature range, which means a yogurt culture must be kept at 110 degrees during the culturing process.

That is what these high priced and lower end yogurt makers do... they maintain a constant temperature for the culturing yogurt. Nothing more or less. If you want to make a lot of yogurt, you need a big vessel or large yogurt making appliance. If you do just a pint at a time, a smaller tool will do the trick or you can do it the old fashioned way as well.

BUT... if you have a sous vide device, you can do so much more than just make yogurt!! Not only can you make incredible steaks, soups, eggs, sauces, fish, etc... but you can make as little or as much yogurt as you want!

Here's what you need:
Fresh cultured whole fat plain yogurt
Fresh whole fat milk
Sous vide device (110 degrees F, 12 hours)
Jar or glass container with a fitted lid

There is no special ratio of yogurt to milk, or maybe there is, but in my experience it is very forgiving. What is important is to have active live cultures in your yogurt and fresh whole milk. You can absolutely use percent or low fat or skim milk, but to make your new starter, I recommend whole milk. It makes a thicker, luscious product that sets up so nicely. But do what you must.... I'm never one to stick with the rules either. :)

As a guide:
1-2 tbsp yogurt to 1 cup of milk

Or for someone that doesn't mess around:
1-2 cups yogurt to 1 half gallon (64 oz) of milk

Now if those ratios don't quite equal each other, I send love and apologies as the Pioneer woman likes to say. I send love and apologies to her for stealing that line because I love it so much.

I use whatever vessel I'm going to use to store it in to finish the process. To me, that is absolutely a large 1/2 gallon mason jar from Amazon. (These work beautifully for the broccoli and cauliflower soups as well as the Oyster stew my Florida boy loves to make.) I also have a vacuum sealer with the jar attachment that I use to seal the jars prior to putting in the sous vide water bath. But hey, if you know you will be eating it right away, why bother vacuum sealing it, right? Me, I will make a couple of these at a time.

Method:
Add your yogurt culture to the jar, followed by the milk and shake with the lid on or stir very well to incorporate the yogurt with the milk. If you see yogurt settling on the bottom of the jar, keep going. You want it well distributed.

Sous-viding (yep just made that up!):
Start your large sous vide bath and set the timer for 12 hours with a temp of 110 degrees F. At a constant, precision controlled temperature, you can almost certainly reproduce consistent results in a consistent time frame if you ensure that you started with enough cultured yogurt for the amount of milk you use. In this case, overachieving is better than underachieving and by that I mean, when in doubt, use more yogurt in your ratio than using less. You won't hurt it by using too much but it may take longer to culture if you use too little. How do you know? Well, it will set up and look fairly solid, not liquid-y. And you will see it jiggle in the jar. So scientific, huh? Haha.

Yogurt styles:
Do it a few times and you will get the hang of it.  And guess what? If you like Greek yogurt, start with Greek yogurt. Just follow the guideline I provided: whole fat plain Greek yogurt, no additives or preservatives of any kind, including sugars or sweeteners. Greek yogurts are a different culture than say, American style yogurts. If you like Lebanese yogurt, use that. Indian yogurt? Use that. Use what you love as long as it fits the bill.

Yogurt Flavoring:
And if you want a Greek honey yogurt or flavoring of any kind, just wait until you make the yogurt and it is refrigerated.  This is the finished product. You can flavor the finished product with whatever in the world floats your boat. Fruit or berries, sweeteners like honey or agave or organic sugars or you can even do savory flavorings.... Can you say Tzatziki? Neither can I but I sure do love Tzatziki.

**And just in case you weren't sure, yes, you do need to refrigerate your yogurt once you are done.

Yo! Make your own Yogurt!

Making your own yogurt couldn't be easier than this!  I've been making my own homemade yogurt for years now.  One of my best friends in the whole world is from India and always has the best yogurt on hand. I saw her once make a milky concoction one night only to see her sneak off, wrap up the bowl in a blanket and carry it off to bed, literally. Ok, not really, but she did put the incubating yogurt under her bed and when I asked her why, she said it was because it would be warm there and keeping your yogurt warm, wrapped up like a baby is a key to making excellent quality yogurt.

I found that my counter space in the kitchen tends to be fairly warm and is adequate for culturing the yogurt overnight but I got so into making yogurt that I purchased two electric yogurt makers which holds the temperature steady at exactly 110 degrees F, which I later found to be the real key to yogurt success. Yogurt needs about 12-18 hours of incubation or culturing time to allow the yogurt cultures to activate and grow.  Having a unit with very low energy requirements to keep the yogurt at the perfect temperature gives me peace of mind because of where I live. Sometimes, it is a little chilly up here. :)

The family size model I own, the Tribest Yolife Yogurt Maker shown in the picture above, is great for making more than one batch of yogurt at a time.  I like this model a lot because I found that you could use cold milk and it still worked perfectly versus heating the milk to just below 180 degrees on the stove, which activates the yogurt cultures. However, to avoid any texture issues from using a cold starter in a warm maker, I found that warming the milk properly will ensure success every time.

Later, I purchased the Easiyo Yogurt Maker.  I mean, what if you wanted to make yogurt while camping or during a power outage or heck, if you are on a budget and want to cut down on electrical appliances? That is where the EasiYo comes in. Now, it doesn't make better yogurt, it just makes yogurt without using an electric appliance, which speaks to me on an energy conservation level, so I bought this one in the picture and gave it a try.  My purchase included the Easiyo kit, which you can find on Amazon for around $25-30, including shipping.  I eventually splurged on a second set of interior canisters so that I could make one batch of yogurt right after the other without waiting for us to eat and empty the interior canister first before making the next batch.  

You can buy their yogurt packets, too, but I prefer to do it the old fashioned way and use fresh yogurt as a starter instead of the packets. Although for ease and the sake of learning, the packets really are a foolproof introduction.  Should you choose to hybridize the method and use fresh yogurt starter, you can try my method below and see if it works for you.  Full instructions for Easiyo can be found here.

• Get a pint of Dannon plain yogurt (not non-fat or low fat, it has to be full fat lol! trust me) and it HAS to be Dannon or any other plain yogurt that has NOTHING but milk and yogurt cultures. I use Dannon because it doesn't have any other additives or preservatives and the cultures are live, which is important. If you buy Dannon, you will make perfect yogurt.
• Take about a cup of yogurt and put it in the canister that fits inside the pink thermos.  
• Fill the rest of the canister nearly to the top with milk warmed to just hot to the touch (110 degrees F is ideal) but not boiling. Leave a tiny bit of air space, about a 1/2 inch, so you can shake it up without it exploding from the confined steam and heat with the top on the canister, of course. 
• Shake it up to mix it well. 
• Make sure the plastic "riser" is inside the pink thermos. The yogurt canister rests on top of this. 
• Add hot water (hot to the touch) to the thermos. There is a fill line in the thermos that will tell you how high the hot water should be. This creates a thermal water bath for incubating the yogurt and keeping the temperature steady.
• Put the canister in the pink thermos with the hot water and the water should rise to be about halfway up the canister of yogurt, which is enough.
• Put the lid on the pink(or whatever color you have) thermos and leave the whole thing to sit out overnight on the kitchen counter.
• Next day, take the canister out and refrigerate. If you're curious, open it and look at it. Does it look set? If so, refrigerate, if not, leave it on the counter for a few more hours.

I use the large YoLife maker the most because we do eat that much yogurt but for smaller batches, the EasiYo is really super.  By the way, I did test the YoLife temperature over the course of 12 hours recently and found that it did a superb job of keeping the temperature steady at exactly 110 degrees, which is the ideal temperature for setting up yogurt.

If you do want Greek style yogurt, you simply strain the fresh yogurt overnight in a yogurt strainer such as the Donvier one I have. This allows more whey to drain out of the yogurt which creates that classic thick texture. The more you strain, the thicker it gets. 

If you want to flavor your yogurt, always make plain yogurt first and then add your jams, honey or other flavorings after the yogurt has been made and strained. Flavorings are added to yogurt after the process is complete. If you add them in the beginning, the yogurt cultures cannot activate properly which is why flavored yogurt or yogurts that "cheat" by adding pectin and other gelatins to thicken them will NOT work as yogurt starters.

I am not promoting Amazon, but I do price comparison shopping there and have a shipping account with a Prime membership which saves me a lot on shipping and usually provides 2 day shipping for free.  If I can find these items locally, I will usually make the effort to buy them locally but it's not always feasible. That is what Amazon is for!  It should be noted that Target now carries the Tribest Yogurt Maker, which is awesome.