Yogurt hints

Guess I better redeem myself.

No more hot dog art.

I had a question about scalding milk and the bits of browned milk, what to do? It's funny when you make a food or recipe, so long you don't use a recipe any more, you forget that others don't know those little things you do that make it work better. Guess I should say "I'm sorry" I didn't think of this hint. I do all my scalding in the microwave. Nothing ever burns to the bottom of the bowl. Well I take that back, I have burnt chocolate chips trying to melt them with too much time!

Take a nice glass bowl bigger than the amount of milk you use for the yogurt. That's a lot of milk so a big bowl. Put it in the micowave and put a piece of wax paper over it (you don't want to let anything drop into the bowl this is a process to kill any bacteria we don't want to culture)

I start heating the milk at 3 minute intervals. It can take a while to boil milk. Remember we are trying to get to about 190 to 210 degrees. My next hint is buy a little thermometer at a kitchen area in your grocery or home/linens store. They are not fancy and are not expensive but so useful for yogurt and testing things like meat when it comes out of the oven. You don't leave these in the oven you just put them into the milk to cover the little bump on the stem (that is how high you must cover to get a correct temperature. I've taken up to 12 or 14 minutes in my microwave to get to the higher temperature. You don't need to stir. Just lift the wax paper and put in the thermometer, you can stir it around a bit to blend the heat of the milk. Wait and watch the temp rise. When it stops you'll know how much more heat you need.

One other hint that is on your basic Cd is to remember to add the semi-cooled milk to the room temperature yogurt culture and really stir it well. I take a little whisk and really mix this up. You don't want to make bubbles in the yogurt but right at this point it is only the yogurt starter and about 1/4 a cup of milk and you can't make much in the way of bubbles. If you don't get this culture all the way through the milk you can't make yogurt. It's not hard just keep stirring gently once you've got it all together.

Do you have any other questions? I love a good question like this was!

Grammie

to Max who just started walking before his 1st birthday

and to Natalie who is just now 2 weeks old

and to all the others, 10 total!