I scream for...yogurt!!!

I have a friend at work who shares the same feelings about plastic, gmo foods and Monsanto in general and last week she regaled to me the tales of her latest cooking adventure...making yogurt! (And yes, I know to you Brits 'yogurt' is spelt wrong. But I am Canadian and therefore I think it is right). So in my next Tesco order I got some organic whole milk and set myself a new challenge in my quest to avoid all processed food products.

After looking at a few recipes online I decided to go with this one  http://www.thekitchn.com

As with most recipes I did it the "Alicia way". Aka read the recipe, do my measurements in some type of relatively comparable way and hope for the best. This method proves successful about 7 times out of 10. And the other 3 attempts are usually complete flops. Like completely and horribly inedible, with my poor husband hoping that I admit defeat before he has to somehow pretend to eat his dinner type of cooking flops. 

Alicia's version of yogurt!

Ingredients:

- 2 pints of milk (or about 4.5 cups to the Canadians out there...remember, using the "Alicia method" means being flexible with exact measurements!)

- 1/4 cup of yogurt (or 60 ml)

I used a pot, a wooden spoon, a large bowl and an even larger pot to make an ice bath, a thermometer, a wisk, a glass measuring cup and a towel.

Method:

1. First I poured the milk into the pot, heat it on the stove until it reached 200 F, stirring frequently. Now, as this was done in the land of Alicia I used a meat thermometer (but still had a dial so worked perfectly). However my temperature measurements maxed out at 180 so I just waited for it to go above that and hoped for the best!

 

2. Next I took it off the heat and poured the milk into an ice bath I made with a Dutch oven filled with ice water and a larger bowl, leaving it until the milk cooked to about 115 F, give or take.

3. Then I scooped out about a cup of the warm milk and whisked in 1/4 c of the organic yogurt, finally whisking into the rest of the warm milk.

4. After that I poured the warm milk into a clean pot, put on the lid, wrapped it up in a blanket and left it beside the radiator for about 4 hours. I am still impressed that I remembered to first periodically stir the yogurt and then check it after 4 hours. Remembering that I had something waiting for hours for me is a miracle in itself!

5. Finally I put my amazing new yogurt to a large glass jar (as clearly evil plastic would ruin my beautiful new creation) and popped it in the fridge. The only thing I will do differently next time is let it sit longer to make the taste a bit stronger. All in all, I am very happy with the result!

Next challenge...cheese!!!