Make Thick Yogurt

It has taken me far too long to get yogurt making down. I've been making homemade yogurt for about four years now. My main complaint up until this past year is that my yogurt was never as thick as I liked it. Every once in a while I'd make a fairly thick batch, but it was sporadic. I tried different yogurt cultures, different incubation methods and heated the milk different lengths of time. I make a half gallon of yogurt every week or two. We use it in smoothies and in exchange for buttermilk in recipes. I use it to make our weekly bread. My kids eat the majority of the yogurt with homemade jam. Until recently, they usually drank it, once I'd stirred in the jam it was usually the consistency of kefir or a little thicker. I can proudly say that these days I can stir jam into the yogurt and the kids can eat it with a spoon without dripping it all over the table and their shirts. 

So what am I doing differently? Adding nonfat dried milk powder. Now I'm not necessarily recommending that everyone add milk powder to their yogurt. However, if your yogurt is always runny, and you find yourself buying store bought yogurt because you like how thick it is... well, how do you think they get the store bought yogurt so thick? Nonfat dried milk powder among other thickeners.

My yogurt process now is to stir one cup of nonfat dried milk powder in one half gallon of milk then heat it to around 160F, then I put a lid on the pot and let it sit for a while, 20-30 minutes. Not enough to kill off all the bacteria but enough that the yogurt thickens well. Then I take the lid off and let the milk cool to 120F. I use yogurt cultures from the Dairy Connection. Sometimes I use a spoonful of yogurt from the last batch. You can use store bought yogurt as well if that is what you've got. Then I place my half gallon jar into a small lunch cooler and pour in water that is about 120F. I place the lid on and set it in a warm place, near the wood stove or in the sun. I add water once or twice to the cooler to bring it back up to temperature. In six to eight hours I've got thick yogurt. Then I place it in the refrigerator where it thickens more.

In the past I tried incubating the yogurt in the oven with the pilot light on and my oven kept it too warm, as did using the crock pot. I've used my food dehydrator but that seems a waste of electricity. Initially I wanted the yogurt to be raw milk and I wanted to heat the milk as little as possible. The less the milk is heated the runnier it is. I had read that nonfat dry milk powder would help the yogurt to be thicker, but I felt like it was such a forbidden ingredient, something I not only felt ridiculous for buying when we have so much quality milk, but also  a potentially harmful ingredient. But I felt even sillier buying yogurt at the store, especially when I realized all the various thickeners in it. 


A few other tricks I tried to thicken up my yogurt were draining the whey off it after incubating it. Some folks make a yogurt cheese this way. It does work, but if you do it at room temperature over a long period of time your yogurt gets tangier. If you do it in the fridge, it takes up a lot of room. Either way it never has the same texture as store bought yogurt. I also tried using rennet to thicken the yogurt - didn't work. I've also heard of people using gelatin - not really my thing.


Molly's fiasco farm dairy site is a good source for yogurt recipes, both for raw milk or heated yogurt with or without nonfat dried milk powder. On a side note, I recall complaining to my dad about how my yogurt was never thick enough and he was saying as how he'd never had such problems. His yogurt always got nice and thick just fine. Recently I told my dad I'd started putting nonfat dried milk powder in the yogurt and it has finally been turning out consistently thick, and he was like, "Oh yeah, we always used dry milk powder to make yogurt." Go figure.

Homemade soaps and salve

I made some herbal healing salve the other day. Zinnia (new goat mama with twin doelings), had a sore cracked, bleeding, scabby teat- (sorry if that is more info than you needed). I started off putting bag balm on it, which is what I had on hand. I wanted something more healing and nourishing. I usually keep a healing salve on hand, but the tins I rummaged up all had little bits of rancid salve in the bottoms. I did have a jar of fresh calendula infused olive oil and a jar of dried comfrey root olive oil. Comfrey use to be known as "knit bone", it has that kind of super healing powers. I also had a couple teaspoons of Vitamin E oil which I added for moisturizing and nourishing oil.

I put three parts of a combination of the two oils in the saucepan above. Then I measured one part beeswax into the oils and gently warmed it up till the wax was melted. I measured a fews drops of various essential oils and tinctures into the bottom of each tin. I used lavender essential oil for soothing and calming properties, tea tree oil/antifungal and rosemary for healing, red thyme for purifying. I also put just a few drops of goldenseal tincture for antibacterial use and st. johns wort tincture for pain relieving properties- I didn't have st. johns wort oil otherwise I would have used that. I keep all these ingredients on hand and close by, so while it might sound complicated, I spent twenty minutes making the salve, and most of that was spent gathering supplies from different corners in the house.

Finished salves cooling. Should be enough for all the cuts, scrapes and bug bites for the next year- for both the goats and we humans as well. I've got tomake these things now; salves, lip balm, lotions, bug spray and sun lotion. Helps me feel prepared for summer. While they don't take long to make- I don't want to spend any more time than necessary indoors during the summer.

A girlfriend and I recently shared a soap making spree. We made four soaps in an afternoon. It was a bit of a soap making fiasco. In the past we've been content to make simple soaps with no more decoration than some lavender or calendula petals. This time I'd been looking up some professional soap maker sites and was inspired to raise the bar to the next level. I had great hopes and ambitions for layered and swirled soaps. I knew exactly what I wanted our soap to look like, and that is why I'm disappointed. I'm a little embarassed  of  the appearance of the following soaps. The bars I've used so far do have a nice fragrance and lather- so thats something. At first I thought about cutting them all up and making cobblestone soap, but I'm running out of soap making days- and they work. Should be enough soap to get us to next fall when the days slow down again.

                      Both above and below are lavender soap. Lavender essential oil and lavender buds.

                 Above is goat milk soap with cedarwood, eucalyptus and lemongrass. Great fragrance.

Making Sauerkraut

If you enjoy sauerkraut and don't already make your own, you should. It is a simple process, and the results will most likely be tastier and healthier than if you buy it. Traditionally sauerkraut is a fermented food, cabbage and salt fermented to make a vitamin rich food that keeps well. If you buy sauerkraut at the store, look for key words like RAW, and KEEP REFRIGERATED, PERISHABLE, NO PRESERVATIVES etc. Otherwise the sauerkraut either hasn't been fermented or has been heat treated to kill off all the healthy bacteria. The ingredients should be simple, cabbage and salt. Of course you can add other spices, herbs and other vegetables which will give you a variety of lacto fermented sides dishes or condiments.

The process is simple. Shred cabbage with a knife or whatever, food processor, mandoline, etc. Toss with salt. 3 TB. of salt to 5 Ib. of cabbage fills a one gallon crock. I just guestimate, as you can see above, my cabbage must have been a couple pounds.  When I put the shredded cabbage into the clean crock, (use glass or ceramic, not metal)  I add a few handfuls and then pack it down with my fist, and continue on until all the cabbage is packed in. Then I weight it down with whatever fits on top. I'd rather avoid using plastic, but this  lid in the above picture fits just about right. In the past I've used a gallon freezer bag filled with salt water (in case it leaked, but it never did) to weight down the cabbage. The goal is to have a layer of brine over the cabbage to prevent mold from forming in the sauerkraut. However, it often happens that a little mold grows on a piece of stray cabbage on the inside of the jar or at the edge of the brine. I just scoop it off. The sauerkraut remains untainted. I cover the crock with it's weight with a clean flour sack, or dish towel and set it somewhere in eyesight but out of the way. You don't want to forget about it, as I have. 

It is recommended that you check on your cabbage the following day to make sure that there was enough liquid from the cabbage that, mixed with the salt, it created its own brine. I must say that I rarely do this and tend to just trust that all is going according to plan. If you've used a cabbage in good health, sprinkled it with salt and packed it down firmly, the salt should draw out the moisture from the cabbage and produce a sufficient brine. However, if you notice the following day that the liquid does not cover the surface, make a small batch of salt water brine to add to the crock. Or, pour in just enough purified water to cover. Or try pressing down on your weight and often that does the trick.

Usually I find that I can forget about the crock for the first week. Unless your house is really warm, you might want to check on it sooner. Otherwise I take a nibble at a week and then every other day till it is to my liking. I prefer a slightly crunchy sauerkraut. This summer I let a batch go too long. It had nice flavor but was a little mushy. My last batch went ten days and had both good flavor and a bit of crispness to the texture. When it is done fermenting I pull it out of the crock and pack it into glass jars and put it in the fridge. If you have a basement or root cellar that stays cool, you can probably store it there. It keeps almost indefinitely, especially if you don't reach into the jar with dirty utensils.

I think Sauerkraut is the introductory for many of us into the world of fermented foods. Other fermented adventures you may want to explore are kimchi, sauerruben, pickles, pickled veggies and other veggie ferments. I've bought and attempted to imitate a fermented salsa they use to carry at our health food store that was fabulous. I wrote about making lacto fermented or pickled veggies last spring, a fairly detailed post so here is the link if it was before your time. If you are interested in knowing more about fermented foods I highly recommend the two books that first got me started: Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, and Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I should mention that the first book has a salt free recipe for sauerkraut along with different herb/spice combinations you may want to try.

Wishing you all an enjoyable January filled with relaxing kitchen projects.