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 Yogurt

Flavored yogurt in cups

Plain yogurt is not sweet, Original is.

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

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.

My first product of experimentation

Mission Accomplished :)

ABC Wednesday-Y for Yogurt
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