Not Crying Over Sour Milk

Yogourmet
Originally uploaded by pwenzel

When we got married one of our wedding presents was a yogurt maker. It came with four heavy plastic cups. You poured in the milk and starter and after about six hours you had four cups of yogurt that tasted better than anything commercially available.

Nice stuff, but fussing with those cups was too much trouble. When the machine busted we didn't bother replacing it.

But lately I have had a craving for the real stuff, homemade yogurt. Somebody, I figured, must be making a machine that makes a quart or more at once.

A year of looking didn't come up with anything that looked practical. Then, about a month ago I found a Yogourmet model on the shelf at the Bellingham Community Food Coop. The box said it makes one or two quarts in about five hours.

And guess what? It works.

They want you to buy their starter, which is pretty expensive - about ten bucks to make six quarts. But after we got a good batch (our second try) we saved a cup in the fridge and used it to start the next batch. So far, that has been working fine. We also find that since we use low fat milk we have to add milk solids.

For many years my standard breakfast has been Rainforest Granola and Stonyfield Farms nonfat French vanilla yogurt (no longer available in Bellingham, alas). The homemade yogurt is so good I put it on the granola plain, no sweetener, no flavor needed.

Yogourmet. At my house, it's what's for breakfast.