Friday, November 26, 2010

Making curd / yogurt in cold climes

Most people with any cooking experience would scoff at this recipe. After all, making curd hardly requires a PhD in cooking.

If you are one of those scoffers, you, my friend, have obviously never lived in a cold place where making curd involved adding yogurt culture to warm milk in a vessel, keeping the vessel in a pre-heated oven set with the lowest temperature possible and then hoping for the best.

The above method usually resulted in either the curd turning to paneer or the curd remaining unset even after several trips to the oven and eventually attaining moksha in the kitchen sink drain. If the curd actually set right, then you knew miracles do occur.

Thus, finding this method to make curd was a God-send:

http://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2010/02/making-yogurt-at-home.html

No more praying involved and perfectly set curd each time irrespective of the weather. Yaay!


Notes:
1. I did not buy yogurt culture packs. I simply used a spoonful of yogurt bought from the store as a starter. For subsequent yogurt-making, I simply used some curd from the previous batch till the newly-made curd started getting too watery/pasty, at which point I would again buy store bought curd to use as a starter.
2. I use fat-free milk since I find curd made from any thicker milk too creamy for my liking.
3. You can imagine how frustrated I had been earlier when I tell you that I actually invested in a candy thermometer for this sole purpose.But, the totally consistent results each time, made the purchase absolutely worth it.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Kalavai Kootu

 Recipe Credit - Gita Iyer of Agrahara recipes  Ingredients Grind 1/2 c coconut  1 green chili 15 cashews 1/2 tsp poppy seeds Season 2 bay l...