Best Yogurt Starter Culture

The best yogurt starter culture…is the one your family loves! I know, Kate, what even?!

You can spend your hours and days making allll the food in the world - Multigrain Sourdough Bread. Wild Game Lasagna. The best ice cream you've ever tasted. But if your family doesn't like these foods, what then? Yogurt is no different - you need to get your family on board!

Here’s the thing - every yogurt starter culture lends a different flavour and most importantly, texture! There are other factors in texture and taste we will get to later, but I had to cover this part first.

When I first started making yogurt, my goal was that I was using the same culture over and over - that I could just keep using some from a previous batch to make the next batch. But as we went on with things, I realized the more batches that same initial culture used, the less we liked it, as it changed from the original culture.

So my frugal self wanted it to keep going and going, but in reality; we really liked it best the first time I used the initial culture.

I never was set on which one I liked best until we tried ABY2C Yogurt Culture and friends, this is the BEST yogurt culture! It makes such a thick creamy mild yogurt, which is what MY family loves. I buy it from Glengarry Cheesemaking. A little goes a LONG way! I'll use the yogurt from making it a couple times before I go back and use the freeze dried again.

How to Make Yogurt

***See this blog post for precise measurements and instructions.***

Step 1: Heat your milk in the pot, to 185°F.

Step 2: Cool your milk to 115°-120°F. I usually pour it into a bowl and put it outside, whisking every 10 minutes or so.

Step 3: Whisk the culture into the milk really well, go up and down, side to side.

Step 4: Pour into your quart jars.

Step 5: Put your jars, into the cooler, and fill with hot tap water, half way up the jars. Our tap water comes out at about 108°F, you wouldn't want anymore than 115°F, if you have super hot tap water.

Step 6: Close the lid on the cooler, and leave it a minimum of 12 hours, preferably 14 or so, but it's even been forgotten about for 30 hours before.

Step 7: Take it out of the cooler and put it in your fridge.

Troubleshooting

Grainy yogurt is a top concern for people texture wise and here’s some reasons behind it:

• Heating your milk too high and too fast - scalding milk makes yogurt grainy.
• Older milk thats starting to acidify because the PH is changing will often end up with little grainy bits that are almost like cheese curds in your yogurt.
• Adding TOO MUCH culture! Yes, less is MORE with yogurt culture!
• Not mixing your yogurt culture in well enough can lead to having chunks from rapid coagulation where you had a big chunk of culture.

Does this mean your yogurt is bad? No, just different! I think that's an important thing to decipher, too. If it smells good, tastes good, and it's just a little texturally off...it's still fine in my book. You can immersion blender it to make it smooth, use in smoothies, or baking. If you really can't stand it…feed it to the chickens and start over, ha!

FAQs

Photos by Dante from Shire by the Sea

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