Yoghurt

Homemade yogurt is a delicious treat, and a healthy way to start the morning. It is also a very simple and economic food, if you make it yourself. You can make it for around half the price of what you can buy in the shops. You can use yogurt in dishes, for example, in the Indian or Turkish and middle eastern traditional recipes. Also in dressings and the famous Greek Tzatziki salad, cucumber in yogurt.
If you really want the best, then try making ice of yogurt, or eat it with the cereal Granola, both are recipes that we have included in this ebook.
To make yogurt, your best friend will be a yogurt maker. They are fairly cheap, simple and works fine.
To make a liter of yogurt you need some culture. This can be 65 grams of yogurt. Either from a shop, or you can use some of what you already have, from a previously made yogurt.
The milk you should use is UHT milk. UHT is for Ultra High Temperature. If you like, you can use an ordinary milk, but the backside of this is that you have to heat up the milk, and then cool it off again, before you use it, so there is no real gain in doing that. The ordinary pasteurized milk is also heated. The process is that the UHT milk is heated to 135°C for three seconds. Whereas ordinary milk is heated for 72°C in fifteen seconds.
UHT is more popular in some countries than others. But you should be able to find the UHT milk in the shops.

Start making yogurt by mixing 65 grams of the donor yogurt with 1 liter milk. Then pour it into the glasses that come with your yogurt maker. Mine has seven glasses and they can contain exactly this portion of milk/yogurt mix. It will not expand in volume.
Put lids on the glasses and leave the yogurt maker turned on with the glasses inside. Now leave it for 6-7 hours. When that amount of time is gone, take the glasses out and put them in the refrigerator to cool, for 12 hours. After that you can start eating your homemade yogurt. It will last a couple of days in the refrigerator.
You have to keep the glasses clean, and I will suggest that you sterilizes them by putting them in the oven at 150°C for 15 minutes (without the lids, if they are made of, or contain, plastics. Then use boiling water instead). Take them out and let them cool down before you add the milk. The natural yogurt is great with honey or marmalade, or jam made of berries. With müsli or the Granola from this book. Or simply natural.

How to make Creme fraiche:
You can make your own creme fraiche by adding the yogurt culture to cream instead of milk. If you want a creme fraiche with lesser fat, you can mix milk with the cream, then you will simply get a smaller concentration of fat. So if your cream is 38% and you mix it; half cream and half milk, you will get a creme fraiche containing circa 19% fat. So you can make it as fat as you like. Simply by putting in as much milk as you see fit.
Remember that you should mix the cream with milk before you add the yogurt culture. You make it by going through the same procedure as when making yogurt.

A recipe using yogurt: Tzatziki. Greek cucumber salad with yogurt.
You can make it by straining the yogurt. To strain the yogurt use a coffee filter and a colander. This will make Greek style yogurt, and that is what you use for this recipe.

Recipe; Tzatziki:
2 cups yogurt natural, strained
1 cup finely sliced cucumber
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Salt and pepper
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Stir well. Season with salt and pepper. Put the bowl, covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator. It will last for a couple of days.