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A good mix of work and not-work...
Nov. 25th, 2012 07:35 pmGalina made mushroom soup today. It's one of my favorites, made all the more special through the use of last year's dried stock of boletes. For my part, I muddled through with some kale salad and did what had to be done to start about six cups of milk onto the path toward becoming yogurt.
The easy part of making yogurt is heating it up to about 185°F (don't want to let it boil and "run away"), then letting it cool to about 100°F, at which point one mixes in a heaping tablespoon of fresh plain store-bought yogurt. After sitting at a more or less constant temperature of about 98–100°F for about 12 hours or so, the result is... yogurt. It doesn't look like the store-bought stuff, but that's because it hasn't been "helped along" with any additives or processing.
The hard part of making the yogurt is maintaining that temperature for the required time.
A long time ago, when making one's own yogurt seized its 15 minutes of fame and a lot of people started doing it, it was pretty easy to pick up a kit consisting of a heating unit and about 5 or 6 glass containers for the product. I haven't seen one of those kits in years, although you can find them online starting at around $30, which sounds about right if one takes inflation into account.
Me, I prefer to save some shekels and use an oven as a thermostatically controlled volume. Since ours is an electric model, however, the only hope of keeping a slightly elevated temperature inside the oven is to turn on the oven light and let the lamp's heat do the work (in a gas stove, quite often the heat generated by the pilot light under the oven is enough to provide the necessary warmth).
However, the temperature inside the oven depends on how fast heat is lost through the oven walls, and that is a function of the temperature difference between the inside and outside of the oven. Basically, the colder it is in the kitchen at night—and in recent days, it gotten pretty nippy around here at night—the faster heat is lost and the lower the temperature will be.
I've read several how-tos on making a thermostatically controlled bath (in one case, for less than $40). I think it will be a good investment (and am awaiting delivery of a control module, and unless I am mistaken, the resulting device ought to also be usable for sous vide cooking).
At the work end of the scale, I'm currently down below where I wanted to be in terms of "words left" for a job due to the client Tuesday morning. I must make a note to do some invoicing tomorrow, and to pay some bills. Natalie arrives for a visit on Wednesday.
I am stoked!
Cheers...
The easy part of making yogurt is heating it up to about 185°F (don't want to let it boil and "run away"), then letting it cool to about 100°F, at which point one mixes in a heaping tablespoon of fresh plain store-bought yogurt. After sitting at a more or less constant temperature of about 98–100°F for about 12 hours or so, the result is... yogurt. It doesn't look like the store-bought stuff, but that's because it hasn't been "helped along" with any additives or processing.
The hard part of making the yogurt is maintaining that temperature for the required time.
A long time ago, when making one's own yogurt seized its 15 minutes of fame and a lot of people started doing it, it was pretty easy to pick up a kit consisting of a heating unit and about 5 or 6 glass containers for the product. I haven't seen one of those kits in years, although you can find them online starting at around $30, which sounds about right if one takes inflation into account.
Me, I prefer to save some shekels and use an oven as a thermostatically controlled volume. Since ours is an electric model, however, the only hope of keeping a slightly elevated temperature inside the oven is to turn on the oven light and let the lamp's heat do the work (in a gas stove, quite often the heat generated by the pilot light under the oven is enough to provide the necessary warmth).
However, the temperature inside the oven depends on how fast heat is lost through the oven walls, and that is a function of the temperature difference between the inside and outside of the oven. Basically, the colder it is in the kitchen at night—and in recent days, it gotten pretty nippy around here at night—the faster heat is lost and the lower the temperature will be.
I've read several how-tos on making a thermostatically controlled bath (in one case, for less than $40). I think it will be a good investment (and am awaiting delivery of a control module, and unless I am mistaken, the resulting device ought to also be usable for sous vide cooking).
At the work end of the scale, I'm currently down below where I wanted to be in terms of "words left" for a job due to the client Tuesday morning. I must make a note to do some invoicing tomorrow, and to pay some bills. Natalie arrives for a visit on Wednesday.
I am stoked!
Cheers...
