Cultivating Cultures: Making Your Own Yogurt

Quarantine has inspired many new habits and hobbies around the world: it seems the world-over learned to make bread. As more people become familiar with the time-intensive processes in making sourdough, yogurt or even kombucha, they all have one moldy yet delicious element: a culture, or fermented product.

Sourdough comes from fermented flour, kombucha is fermented tea, and yogurt is fermented milk. Humans have been fermenting their milk–cow’s, goat’s, sheep’s–for thousands of years. And making homemade yogurt is a common pastime for many American households.

A new favorite pastime has been rescuing almost-spoiled milk by turning it into yogurt. Most recipes say you need to start with a yogurt culture starter, but you can make your own using this YouTube video: setting a lemon with a single top to bottom slit in a bowl of milk, letting it sit for 12 or more hours.

Once you have a yogurt starter, a simple and accessible recipe to use is New York Times contributor Priya Krishna’s (Dad’s) yogurt recipe in her cookbook Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family.

Yogurt makes a great alternative for milk and buttermilk in most recipes. Instead of heavy cream, yogurt in the scone mix makes for a lighter–yet still fluffy scones; marinating your chicken in yogurt rather than buttermilk still creates a tender and flavorful meal; keeping yogurt around in your fridge means you can create a phenomenal dip with a few herbs and veggies.

Miss your morning cup of fruity yogurt? Add a little jam or apricot preserves or lemon curd to sweeten your bowl of yogurt. Making yogurt at home can not only limit the types of dairy you buy, but also preserve and extend it’s (fridge) shelf life.