Cooking For Engineers

[Jim Cooley]

Jeez, it's really easy to make your own yoghurt!

I took a quart of milk, a splash of heavy whipping cream and a TBS of some yoghurt I like and stuck it in the oven at about 96° for a a couple days. Stirred it down a few times, and the result was almost the same as store bought, and a helluva lot cheaper.

Consistency is rather odd, though: the cream and curds float.
A quick stir fixes that, but I'm wondering what would happen if I added a tiny bit of powdered gelatine? Anyone have some experience with this?

Since I was experimenting w/ fermentation, I later made a batch of dosa batter. It's a southern Indian thing, wouldn't expect anyone here to know about it.

But aside from the gelatine for the yoghurt, I need a cheap hack to keep a 1 quart plastic jar at about 90-100° F. I'm thinking one of those coffee mug warmers, but maybe the brains here might have a better idea?

The 1 quart plastic container doesn't fit in my coffee maker, or I would have tried that.

Thanks,

Jim

[Michael Chu]

I take it you don't have a water bath / sous vide setup Jim?

I've found that my large rice cooker when I leave the lid off and have it set to "keep warm" (only two settings - toggle down for cook and toggle up for not cook which ends up being "keep warm") is enough power to hold the water at 84-85F. That might be warm enough to help your fermentation, but if not, partially covering the bowl (plastic wrap?) should raise the temperature a little bit. Water will need to be replenished at regular intervals due to evaporation though (remember to warm up the water before pouring it in). You might want to experiment with what cookers you have to see what temperatures they are able to "keep warm" stuff when the lid is off. (When the lid is on, the water temperature passes food safe temps which would defeat your purpose.

[Jim Cooley]

Thanks Michael, good idea. Bet I can find one at a thrift store for $5.

[Michael Chu]

Let me know what you end up doing and if it works - I'm always interested in out-of-the-box methods of cooking