Wednesday, July 4, 2012

The Yogurt Quest

It is true. We Indians love Yogurt, or curds- as we call it. For South Indians like me, curds is an essential addition to my meal. Rice with curds/yogurt marks the end of a satisfying meal.

In India, my mom always used to have tiny containers of curds separate for each member of the family and we usually finished the whole of it. When we were living in California, plain yogurt was very prevalent and yummy. Even the buttermilk there is thick and creamy, i would have liked it a bit more sour, but hey, it was readily available and it tasted excellent with my rice! I never felt the need to make my own as the thick, velvety stuff was appetizing in itself.

drinking flavored yogurt in Seoul
Drinking Yogurt
Fruit flavoured cup yogurt
Flavored yogurt in cups

Plain yogurt
Plain yogurt is not sweet, Original is.
sour cream for making curds
Sour cream
Yogurt in Seoul is mostly flavored. There are of course, tons of flavors and style -drinking yogurt, cups of yogurt, yogurt and fruit etc. And they all taste amazingly rich and creamy. And i never once came across buttermilk here. But my primary objective is to get plain yogurt, that i can mix with my rice. I was able to find one company that makes Plain Yogurt. (Remember, Original Yogurt tastes sweet.) This does taste ok, but, i usually crave for the bit more of sour in it. So, started my quest of making my own sour curds.

Sour cream culture for making curds in Seoul
Sour cream culture for making curds
There are of course, tons of tutorial on how to get culture for the making the curds, when you have none. But, i went by the tested advice of my friend who swore by the sour cream! I managed to find the exact sour cream made by the company she swore upon, at Emart. This was to be my culture to curdle the milk.
  • I started off by heating the milk to medium heat, until there were tiny bubbles on the sides of the vessel. 
  • Added about half a spoon of sour cream to about one cup of milk.
  • Heated the grill to medium for around a minute and placed the container of milk inside for a few hours. Culture needs a warm temperature to start the curdling process. You can leave the warm milk by a sunny window too, if it works.
  • It took me around whole night for it to curdle.  The result was creamy, but not too sour curds.
  • I took this curds as my primary culture and repeated the process again to get more curds. This time, it was perfect. Not too bland, not too sour. Just right. Perfect with rice.
curds made in Seoul
My first product of experimentation

Mission Accomplished :)

ABC Wednesday-Y for Yogurt
Midweek Blues


15 comments:

  1. Glad you shared this. Probably won't try it myself, mind you, but it was interesting♫♪

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  2. Culcha! The daughter likes yogurt!
    ROG, ABC Wednesday team

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  3. Spoilt for choice yet nothing like the home made curds!!

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  4. awesome...looks so delicious :) Thanks for sharing...

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  5. Have yogurt every morning. Love thick buttermilk.

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  6. I love yoghurt! There is this dahi-butti thing that my ma learnt to make from one of her south indie friends. It is my absolute favourite.

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  7. An interesting process. I have never accustomed myself to the taste of yogurt. But my son loves it.

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  8. My late father used to make yogurt and add them to the Indian dishes he prepared, but I never like to drink it on it's own or with rice. He was an immigrant from India but married a local Singaporean and settled here, never once going back till his death.

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  9. oh I never knew there was a trick involved in making a good yoghurt!!

    great post

    http://styledestino.blogspot.com

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  10. I didn't know yogurt had such a process!
    interesting post

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  11. Wonderful that you are making your own 'curds' ~ enjoy the day ~ thanks for coming by ~ ^_^ (A Creative Harbor)

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  12. you are right...a meal never has a satisfying finish without curdrice!

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  13. My daughter love frozen yogurt!

    Y is for...
    Rose, ABC Wednesday Team

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  14. Hello.
    I have yogurt everyday in my smoothies. We use Fage Greek yogurt. It doesn't really taste of anything and it has a kind of sour tang, but a couple of scoops and it transforms my smoothies.
    Thanks for sharing.

    You Make My Eyes Beautiful

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