Easy Yogurt

Archeologists and geneticists are discovering that early people in Europe were keeping dairy herds for nearly 2,000 years BEFORE most of the population developed the mutation to digest lactose. Why were early Europeans keeping cows and goats for milk when the lactose would have made most adults sick?

The answer appears to involve fermented milk in the form of yogurt and cheese.  The fermentation of milk involves a culture that digests the lactose (sugar) and produces lactic acid (which most lactose intolerant adults can eat digest comfortably). 







Yogurt comes in many varieties: 

• Thermophilic is the most common in American grocery stores.  This culture requires keeping the milk and culture at a low heat for some hours to activate the culture.
• Greek yogurt and its cousin labneh are common in the Middle East and now are popular in the United States.  This type of yogurt is strained to press out some of the liquid.  The completed product is thicker in texture than other yogurts.  Labneh has the consistency of a soft cheese.

But I am blogging today to tell you about mesophilic yogurt.  Specifically, I use a mesophilic culture called Viili.  It is thought to have originated in Sweden, but today is considered a Finnish yogurt culture.  As with making kefir in my previous post, mesophilic yogurt ferments milk at room temperature.  No heating required!

Easy Peasy Instructions:

• Mix 1 cup of whole milk with a packet of Viili mesophilic yogurt culture (can be ordered online from Cultures for Life) in a mason jar.
• Place a coffee filter or paper towel over the mason jar and allow to sit 24 hours (usually 48 hours required for the first batch when the culture is reviving) at room temperature on your kitchen counter.
• Once the yogurt thickens until it looks, moves, and tastes like yogurt, move to your refrigerator. 
• Save 1 tablespoon of the yogurt and enjoy eating the rest. 
• Start a new batch by mixing 1 cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of the first batch in a mason jar.  If you want larger batches, add 1 tablespoon of your yogurt per 1 cup of milk.

Be sure to feed your new yogurt culture friends.  If you do not give them fresh milk at least every 7 days, the culture will starve and die.

Hard Cider

Here is another easy peasy fermentation project. Like hard cider such as the popular Ace or Angry Orchard?  Make your own!

• Buy or get some apple juice that has no preservatives.  It can have ascorbic acid to retain color. I use Sam's Choice 100% Apple Juice.  

• Sprinkle some wine yeast (bread yeast works too but may not taste as good) over the juice. Leave the cap off the bottle and cover with a coffee filter. 

•. Wait a few days. Taste the juice/cider every day until it reaches the balance of sweet/hard/alcohol that you like.  

• Put the cap back on. Refrigerate. Consume. 

WARNING:  The yeast consumes the sugars in the juice to produce two things:  alcohol and carbon dioxide. If the yeast have consumed all the sugar and died, your cider will be higher in alcohol and stopped bubbling carbonation. If not, it may continue to ferment in the fridge and will be very carbonated. In extreme cases it can explode. So be aware of this when you open. 

Kefir

Kefir is a type of cultured milk resembling a more liquid version of yogurt. The flavor tends to be milder than yogurt but tart. You can buy kefir in grocery stores, but it tends to be highly sweetened and expensive. Instead, make your own for less than a dollar.

Homemade kefir is rich in probiotics. Studies find regular consumption helps alleviate or eliminate many gastrointestinal ailments. 

And it's SOOOoo easy to make:

• Order some "kefir grains" from an online vendor such as Cultures for Health. Kefir grains are a complex colony of enzymes and cultures which feed on the lactose (milk sugars) in milk and ferment the milk into kefir. 

• Pour a cup of milk (I use organic whole milk for the taste) in a mason jar. 

• Put the kefir grains in a square of cheesecloth and tie the cheesecloth into a little sack or pouch holding the kefir grains.  Alternatively put the grains directly in the milk and filter them out later with a fine mesh kefir. I've also used a metal tea ball to hold the kefir, but some books say to avoid having metal touch fermenting foods. 

• Place a coffee filter or paper towel over the mason jar and screw the jar's ring (but NOT seal/lid) over the coffee filter to secure the filter. 

• Leave your handy dandy new fermentation machine on your kitchen counter at room temperature. 

It may take 48 hours for your first batch to refresh the kefir grains. After that, the grains will do their work usually in 24 hours. It may be faster or slower depending on how warm your home is. 

Ferment 1 cup the first time and then build up to 2-4 cups. 

When the kefir has reached the consistency of loose yogurt, either move the whole jar to your fridge or filter out your grains and store the kefir in containers. Then start another batch. The grains can wait a week in the fridge but if stored much longer without fresh milk, your little kefir grains will starve and die. Feed them and they will feed you. 

Kefir can be eaten by itself or with berries, fruit, honey, agave, etc. It also makes tasty smoothies and Greek-style dips.  

Fermentation Week

This week I begin a series on fermentation.  In recent months I've become fascinated by how ancient peoples across the planet turned to fermentation to preserve both food...and their long term health.  In scanning PubMed for research articles, numerous studies find people who consume more fermented foods report better health overall and a greater resilience to a number of cancers and gastrointestinal ailments.

In my readings one book shines above them all. I highly recommend Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation.  It's excellent. 

When I started fermenting foods, I was apprehensive that I'd poison myself. Yet, I'm finding fermentation is easy. It's safe. It approaches nature as an ecology shared with our bodies, the tiny living things within our bodies and the life forms surrounding us. Try to seal ourselves off from this ecology and we quickly grow sick. 

Still, our best guides to safety are smell and taste.  If something seems off, trash it and start a fresh batch.  

Happy Fermenting!