Yogurt Cliffhanger

Through a series of capricious events that I can't really discuss right now (shh! Yogurt secrets!) I have found myself knee deep in the learning of all things yogurt. My days have been filled with lists upon lists of long boring latin names for bacteria that render regular supemarket milk into a think, tangy colony of microscopic bugs.

So, after the better part of a week emailing experts, failing to secure bacterial cultures from dangerous countries like Canada and reading posts from all reaches of the hippy-bullshit webosphere, I have come to the place where a man must make a stand.

That place is making your own yogurt.

Now, while I ponder just where I made a wrong turn in the events of my life that lead me to this particularly wusscore event in my life, you get to learn how yogurt is made.

Step One.

Secure this list of stuff:

One $15 yogurt maker off Amazon

One quart fancy organic milk (in my case Evans Farm whole milk)

One Pint (hopefully) active cultured yogurt. The more weird latin names on the label the better.


One Candy thermometer (the glass bulb-ish kind with a clip)

One big pot of boiling water

One 3 quart mason jar

One stirring element (Spoon!)

Q. What does Snoop Dogg use to get his socks white?

A. Bleeatch! Heh, heh. Yeah, sorry... You'll need some plain bleach.

Getting my Yogurt On.

First thing is to wash and sterilize everything with boiling water and/or a very mild dillution of bleach water. Don't over do the bleach or you risk killing off the little bugs that will soon make you rich with the wealth of thick, bad milk. Rinse everything WELL.

Next clip your candy thermometer to the lip of the mason jar, fill the mason jar with your milk and put the whole thing in the boiling water. This is what is called a "double boiler". It's how you melt chocolate before you drizzle it on someones nethers.

Now wait. And stir.

You're literally waiting for milk to boil. Isn't the world of food exciting? You should've finished college.

Watch the thermometer VERY carefully as it approaches 140'F. As soon as it comes within, say, 8 degrees of 140 pull the mason jar out with some oven mitts and put it on the counter.

Quickly dump the boiling pot of water out and fill it with a steady stream of cold tap water in your kitchen sink.

Cooled off? Right. Now throw a couple of trays of ice cubes in the pot with the water and then put the milk jar in the ice water.

Now you're literally waiting for milk to cool off. Fuck. Me.

While the milk is cooling off (you want it at between 100 and 110 degrees) plug in your cheap yogurt maker and warm it up (make sure to put the container that the yogurt is going to go funky in in the machine).

Now get that pint of store-bought, active culture, yogurt out. This is where the right types of bacteria will come from. You hope. I hope.

Is your milk at the right temp? Good.

Take 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the yogurt and mix it, slowly, with a cup of luke warm milk from your mason jar untill the lumps are gone.

This will take approximately forever.

Now pour this mixture and the rest of the milk into the cup in the pre-heated machine. Give it another minute of good stirring.

Put the lids on.

You're done!

Sort of.

What will happen for the next 6-10 hours is that the bacteria that you got from the store stuff will (again, hopefully) begin to eat away at your milk, raising the acidity level with its bacteria poop (I swear to God) and also populating the milk with massive numbers of itself so that no bacteria from around the way can get in on its turf.

Also, it will thicken and tang-ify the milk and turn it into, well, yogurt.

The Cliffhanger?

Well, let's face it, there are a lot of things that can go wrong here.

I could have used too much bleach.

My store yogurt might be dead, weak or old.

The milk could have been too hot when I mixed in the 1/2 cups of starter cultures.

The milk might have already been sort of bad already and thus already filled with a rival gang of bad bacteria.

And on, and on, and on.

Will it work?

I'll let you know tomorrow if I got a quart of yogurt or just a bunch of hot, stinky milk.