I hate shopping. For anything and everything. I’ve had furious arguments with horrible insensitive men who assume that all women want to shop all day for clothes and shoes because I really don’t think that there are many people out there who hate shopping more than I do.
Alas, it is a necessity in my life. I have to do it at least once a month. I can handle those enormous once a month trips, I can handle it. What irritates me are all of those smaller trips in between where only one or two things need to be procured. A gallon of milk. Diapers. A special ingredient for the dinner I want to make. I hate those trips.
Luckily, as time goes on, my shopping has become more efficient and I am able to minimize the number of those small runs. I’ve learned to stock my home in such a way that it lasts the full month, but I’ve also learned to make a lot of things homemade so that I don’t have to worry about buying them. One of these things is yogurt. My son eats yogurt for breakfast every morning and I like to always have yogurt on hand because I LOVE Indian food and yogurt is a big part of that cuisine.
It was actually from an Indian cookbook that I was able to first learn how to make yogurt. I messed it up quite a few times, but I figured out a few tricks that might help.
Start off with a quart of milk. You can use any milk you like, I use whole milk, but you can use 2% or 1%.
Bring the milk to a boil in a large heavy pot and stir constantly. When the milk starts to rise, remove it from the heat. Allow the milk to cool slightly. Don’t let it get to room temperature, you want it to be warm to the touch, but not hot.
You need some “starter” for this. Starter is about 2 Tablespoons of yogurt that you have. You can use purchased yogurt from the dairy aisle. That’s what I use.
Put the yogurt in a heat-safe large bowl and whisk it until it is smooth. Slowly add the warm milk, whisking all the while.
Make sure that the yogurt and milk are thoroughly incorporated.
Now you need to let the yogurt set up. You need a warm place for this. I like to use my oven. If your oven has a “WARM” setting, start this while the milk is still boiling. If your oven doesn’t, the simply set the oven to it’s lowest temperature (mine goes only as low as 170 degrees F.) and let it preheat while you are preparing the yogurt. Turn the heat off before you put the bowl inside and make a warm and snuggly place for the bowl to sit.
I put a thick dish towel on the oven rack, the bowl on the towel, and then another thick towel over the bowl. This needs to be a gently warmed environment so the yogurt sets up correctly. It’s not as hard as it sounds. It takes 8 hours for the yogurt to set up. Take a peek about 4-5 hours in and if the oven isn’t warm, set the warmer on again for 5 minutes and turn it off before it gets too hot.
Do this right and you’ll have your own homemade yogurt. And you won’t have to go to the store to buy one lousy little tub. Your welcome.
Enjoy!
