Ask Allie!

What is Ask Allie?

Ask Allie is our food-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!

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I've bought the indian yogurt culture a few months ago and I've noticed a slow but steady decline in the thickness of it. It's very watery now vs when I was making it in the beginning it was extremely thick. What can I do to combat this? Thanks!

After follow up questions, mostly where I ask for the process to explained as though I’d never made yogurt before (many of you are familiar with being asked that question):

I don't go more than a week before making a new batch, usually 2 times a week is what I do. I've been doing the double strength culture for a while now and it doesn't seem to help. I'm heating the milk up to 180, holding it for at least 10 minutes, and letting it cool down in the pot until it reaches 115-110. Then i add the culture in (which has been sitting on the counter getting to room temp) 2 tbsp per cup. I mix it in well, it lives in a mason jar with the lid on, wrapped in a blanket and put in an insulated lunch box. I ferment it for 5-12 hours. Then let it set in the fridge for 6 hours. I don't poke or pry at it with a spoon. 

I'm trying to avoid buying a yogurt machine as I'd like to do it without a device. I'm thinking it's a heat issue whilst it's fermenting. I don't know though because for the first 5-10 batches the yogurt was so thick! I could put a spoon in it and take a chunk out and you could see where. Now its just like drinking kefir milk. (I don't have anything fermenting near)

Is there another way I can ferment it that will keep the heat more consistent? Are there any yogurt machines you recommend? I saw that you offer greek/indian culture. Is this one thicker? Is it just greek mixed with indian?

— Chantal

I don’t think you’re going to like this, but it sounds like you’ve been overheating your culture. You can usually do it up to 110F without damaging a culture (some people claim up to 120, but I’ve never met one who made yogurt very long before they said their culture wasn’t working right), but it’s really better to go 100. As low as 90 will still ferment.

Up until Sabrina sent me an Instant Pot, I always did my yogurt in a cooler. I don’t own a yogurt maker and usually have to check w/ Sabrina if a question I get involves one because I know so little about them. While I think that it’s got to be these high heats you’re maintaining when adding the culture, it MIGHT be worth it to invest in a hard-shell lunch box. That said, I would not do so because I’d trust in the blankets. If you want to control for the lunch box itself, I’d grab one of those tiny coolers or a hard-shell box for it. Otherwise, drop that heat more before you add the culture. 

We have 4 Indian yogurts, I think. The Indian Greek is a Greek-style yogurt that comes from India (like all the other Greeks, those Greeks just come from different places and have different flavor profiles), a regular (not Greek-style) thermophil from India, the dahi (traditional Indian culture), and the malay (same).

I've tried to lower the heat to 100 degrees and it worked! I'm going to keep at it. What's your most popular yogurt culture? I'm looking to get some different types. Also I was wondering how different is the taste of jun vs kombucha? I've been very interested in jun but can't source it locally.

— Chantal (same as above, but many of y’all ask these last two questions as well and also probably want to know that the heat drop worked)

Yay!!!

This is weird, but I had to look up the answer to your question. I do all the writing, but I don’t even read the orders emails because Sabrina does all that stuff. In order, the 10 most popular yogurts this year have been (other than the bundles, but I can’t see what people ordered in those without looking at each order individually): vegan coconut yogurt, authentic Greek, Bulgarian, skyr (both Icelandics, not long), matsoni, Japanese Caspian sea, French, Beijing, filmjolk and European! For last year, top 10 were: coconut, skyr, dahi, amasi, fil, viili, long skyr, traditional heirloom, langfil, and Bulgarian! Those choices are interesting and surprising. It looks like the pandemic has made a LOT more people willing to do thermophils, I assume because they’re home more to fuss with heating the milk. In my house, the most popular yogurts are authentic Greek, long viili, langfil, Armenian, bollnasfil. She likes a lot of other ones, but those are her favorites. Sabrina’s favorite is the buttermilk-style yogurt. I don’t think Child Tester has tried that one out yet, though. 

The taste is different by a lot. I personally think (and fam agrees) that both kombucha and jun are disgusting, but we can all tolerate jun if for some reason we have to imbibe it. None of us can really tolerate the flavor of kombucha (no matter what goes in for f2), so kombucha in my house is plant fertilizer or scobys to make jerky with. If you are into kombucha, my guess is that you’re really gonna dig the jun. It’s far superior to EVERY kombucha I’ve tried, in my opinion.

This question was sent to Sabrina, who forwarded it to me because I like making cheeses:

Hello,
My name is Amy and I have been having a ridiculous amount of fun with a number of thermophilic, mesophilic, and kefir cultures I got from you this summer.
I've just spent a day trying to make mozzarella and had it flop because of a thermophilic culture issue with culture I bought elsewhere. I feel that maybe it isn't as resilient and dynamic as I'd like now that I've spent time playing with yours. I'm disappointed to have spent so much time only to have the results be underwhelming. And I've also wondered if I'm trying too hard to recreate the Italian environment to achieve their cheese rather than finding what will adapt to my environment. I'm missing the robustness of your heirloom cultures and the way they interact with their environment over time
I had several batches of mesophilic yogurt separate into curds and whey which were yummy. I'm wondering if I could use one or more of your cultures, maybe the stringy ones, to make a stretchy cheese that is similar to mozzarella with my own twist? 
Rather than straining to recreate the cheese adapted to someone else's environment, what could I do to create ease by adapting to something which will adapt to me? 

I'd appreciate your feedback and perspective.

— Amy

Amy, I don’t understand why you bought a culture to make moz. You absolutely do NOT need to spend money on a culture for that particular cheese! Use this link to make it next time:  If you don’t have a microwave, you can do that step on the stove (as is traditional). When I was making cheese w/ this method a lot, though, I got the process down to 27 minutes. 

Regarding whether ropey yogurts can be used to make cheese, yes. I’ve only used them to make labneh, though. If you experiment with this, please keep good records because I BADLY need to know what comes up it and am too swamped to do these kinds of fun experiments right now!

After sending the above email, I had to send another because I saw this yogurt cheese on Facebook.