#21: Yogurt: The History, The Method & The Benefits
A deep dive on how to make your own homemade yogurt, a bit of history behind this popular food, and why it's beneficial to your health
Hello, hello friends! Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about the direction of this newsletter. I love learning and sharing about different subjects, doing deep dives, and talking about local food, organic produce, other less frequently discussed food related topics topics, but I also thought it would be fun to explore other food related avenues. Today’s subject centers on something I’ve been experimenting with over the past few months: homemade yogurt!
I don’t know where I first learned of it or what prompted my initial curiosity, but it has been so rewarding to make a product I would normally buy at the store. It’s a magical feeling when you put a bowl of heated milk (plus a bit of starter) into the oven and hours later, yogurt emerges. The taste is far superior to anything I can find at the store, and I love the ability to control consistency, taste, and texture. Will I be making this regularly throughout my life? Who knows! But, due to the time required being mostly hands off, I see how to easily integrate it into my weekly routine.
A quick fact about me: I’m a history buff. So, naturally I had to research the history of yogurt! The modern word derives from the Turkish word “yoğurmak,” which means to “thicken, coagulate, or curdle.” This makes all the sense in the world, as yogurt is essentially curdled, thickened milk!
According to an Oxford Academic article, it is an ancient food, used in many countries and cultures around the world, such as India, Egypt, Spain, Russia, Japan, Armenia, Lebanon, and Brazil. It’s thought that yogurt came into existence because milk easily spoiled. In the Middle East, around 10,000-5,000 BC, herdsmen transported milk in bags created from intestinal gut of animals (what?!). This contact with intestinal juices soured and curdled the milk, which in turn preserved it and conserved it for longer periods of time. This continued for thousands of years because making yogurt or drying milk were the only safe milk preservation methods.
When you think of yogurt, the kind you will most likely associate with the final product is pasteurized cow’s milk, but traditional, more ancient yogurts typically used different kinds of raw milk, such as sheep or buffalo.
In the 20th Century, researchers explored the health benefits and discovered beneficial lactic acid bacteria. While it offers many nutrients, including protein and calcium, the health benefits center on its live bacterial content. This bacteria (which also appears in fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut) can help lower obesity, type 2 diabetes, IBS, crohns, ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis. It can also help to increase your microbiome’s diversity, which can fight disease, boost the immune system, and break down potentially toxic food compounds.
After this health benefit discovery, yogurt soon became a popular commercial product in Spain when Isaac Carasso sold yogurt with jams. Shortly thereafter this success, his brother, Daniel, founded Dannon in France in 1932, which eventually made its way to the United States in 1941. Its popularity has grown over the past four decades, and alternative yogurts, such as coconut, almond milk, and soy, are now increasingly visible in stores.
Now, onto the actual process! Below you’ll find my basic yogurt recipe, along with additional information about each step to you understand why its necessary and what it does place. I continue to tweak and experiment, but this is the basic roadmap:
Heat 8 cups (or more!) of milk to anywhere from 110°F-180°F.
You can choose as much milk as you want. I find 8 cups of milk produces about 1 medium size glass container of yogurt.
The higher the temperature, the more frequent stirring is required. You don’t want milk to scald, hence the continual stirring. Because your milk is most likely already pasteurized, you don’t have to worry about any harmful bacteria.
This first key step alters the structure of the milk protein, casein, which helps create yogurt. A higher heating temperature can kill native bacteria that could compete with introduced cultures, and it can also create a thicker yogurt. If you’re working with raw milk and don’t want to kill all those cultures the dairy worked hard to preserve, don’t heat it above 110°F-115°F.
Let the milk cool to 110°F-115°F (if initially heated above those temperatures).
This is essential because if the temperature of the milk is too high when you add the starter (discussed below), you could kill the bacteria in the starter (which is what you need to make yogurt!).
Add yogurt with live bacterial content (either store-bought or homemade from a previous batch) to cooled milk (anywhere from 1 Tbsp-1 cup or more, depending on the amount of milk used and the desired final consistency) and stir to incorporate.
This is an element to play around with. I used to use ½ cup yogurt per 8 cups of milk. Lately, I’ve done around ¼ cup or just a few tablespoons. From what I understand and learn from experts, less is more!
Place milk mixture in a warm environment (100°F-110°F) for 4-16+ hours.
This is the fermentation process, where milk turns to yogurt! Longer fermentation = tangier yogurt. Higher temperature = less fermentation time.
I find the ideal place is the oven on the proof setting, around 105°F. If you have an Instant Pot, there is a yogurt setting you could also use to incubate and ferment the milk. I have not yet experimented with this, but I plan to soon and will keep you updated on the results!
Place in the refrigerator to cool and/or place yogurt in cheesecloth to strain out some whey to reach a thicker consistency (anywhere from 2-6 hours depending on the desired consistency).
If you like thick, Greek or Skyr style yogurt, you need to strain it! I do this immediately after I remove it from the oven: I don’t have proper cheesecloth at the moment, so I’ve been using a few pieces of paper towel layered over a fine mesh strainer. This has proved to be very effective!
If you like thinner yogurt, simply put the bowl in the fridge and let it rest. If it’s still too runny, strain it for a few hours using the above method to create your desired consistency.
When cooled, enjoy the delicious fruits of your labor!
As you can see, a few, long steps are required to make yogurt, but most of the time is hands-off, either resting in the oven or in the fridge, simply letting the process evolve. If you’re a visual learner, here is a video to help explain and show you the process!
Throughout my experiments over the past few months, I learned that small changes to the process can lead to different results. A different milk, higher initial heating temperature, a longer fermentation, or a larger addition of yogurt “starter” can all create a thinner or thicker, tangier or gentler, curdier or smoother final product. After multiple tests, I have discovered my preferred method is a lower initial heated milk temperature a 12 hour fermentation at 105°F with a small amount of starter.
Although I’m slowly working towards my preferred yogurt taste and consistency, every time isn’t perfect, and that’s ok! It’s part of the fun of experimentation, and the best part is that the final product is still edible! For example, I left my most recent batch in the oven for closer to 19 hours, and let’s just say the yogurt has a significantly increased fermented flavor compared to the 12 hour “yogurt flavor” (I know, a very technical description 😂). Another time, I heated the milk up to 180, in the hopes of producing a thicker yogurt, but due to a longer fermentation at a higher temperature, the final product curdled. It was still edible, but not as smooth as normal.
Sandor Katz, a fermentation expert, details his preferred method in this excerpt of The Art of Fermentation, and describes how different temperatures and starter amounts affect the final product. But, as with most things in life, it’s up to you to figure out your favorite. Half of the fun is tweaking it along the way!
You might be wondering… why would I go to all the effort of creating homemade yogurt when you can easily buy a tub at the store? Are there benefits other than satisfaction, creativity, and the ability to suit the final product to my preference?
Minimal research exists on this topic, but I have my own thoughts:
Diversity. In the industrial food system, standardization is the name of the game. If you buy a tub of Fage or Dannon or Yoplait, you know exactly what you’re going to get all throughout the year. As I learned while on the farm last year, the joy of making raw milk cheese from animals on the pasture leads to different tasting cheeses, depending on what the animals graze on in the pasture and what grain they’re fed. The same could be said with milk. While I use the best milk I can find for each batch, I enjoy the difference and variety that making my own yogurt allows.
Lack of additives and preservatives. Due to its natural fermentation process, yogurt naturally lasts longer than some other dairy products, like milk! But, like with most commercial items, some use additives and preservatives. Making my own yogurt lacks those additives, allowing for a purer product bursting with flavor!
With all this talk about yogurt, there are so many ways to enjoy it outside of breakfast with berries and granola! Although homemade yogurt certainly isn’t required for these recipes listed below, here are a few creative ways to use it!
Harissa Chicken with Leeks, Potatoes & Yogurt
Ottolenghi Roast cauliflower with Yoghurt and Spicy Red Pepper Sauce
Lidey’s Chickpea Salad with Fresh Herbs & Scallions
This is not necessarily a recipe, but I love roasting veggies, placing them on a bed of yogurt, and topping with a simple dressing, a few crushed nuts, and a sprinkling of fresh herbs. This is deeply inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi, and a fabulous way to dress up your veggies (& very similar to the method used above for the roast cauliflower with the spicy red pepper sauce!).
Recipe of the Week: Molly Baz’s Cucumber Bag Salad with Miso-Poppy Dressing
Excuse the poor photo, but with the abundance of summer cucumbers in full swing, I highly recommend this one! It’s a simple mix of cucumbers and cilantro, but the miso-poppy dressing is *chef’s kiss.* The combination of orange juice, buttermilk, miso, rice vinegar, olive oil & poppy seeds tastes like the batter in my favorite olive oil cake, and pairs beautifully with the cucumbers! I only used about ¼-⅓ of the dressing on the salad, and have been using the rest to dress up my other weekday salads!
If you’re a visual learner, here is a Tiktok video of someone making it!
Sources:
https://www.splendidtable.org/story/2013/07/24/yogurt-an-excerpt-from-the-art-of-fermentation
https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/73/suppl_1/4/1819293
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/food-features/yogurt/
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/microbiome/
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=105777