Dried yoghurt - really? why?

Today we were cruising the supermarket aisle, which I have to say is a mildly sad commentary on the way we entertain ourselves. No exciting adventures in the outback or trips to exotic countries for us. No trips to the theatre, the cinema or expensive restaurants. No - we like to cruise the supermarkets. Well I exaggerate somewhat, but nevertheless we do do it every now and then. Well we have time on our hands and they are interesting places - where western civilisation is going is on display on those shelves.

But I digress, This is not about supermarkets. As we were travelling one aisle - can't even remember which one, my husband noticed a packet labelled yoghurt - see above. How come, we thought. This was not a refrigerated area it was just a supermarket shelf. So I picked it up and saw that you added water, and so put it down with a tut of disgust. Why on earth would you bother with adding water to some sort of powder when there were long aisles of fresh yoghurt of all kinds. But on my way home my mind returned to it and I gradually became more intrigued. If it's there there's a market.

The first thing I discovered is that the packets are from a New Zealand company called Easiyo and that you really need the Easiyo yoghurt maker to be able to make the yoghurt. Well probably not really. The Easiyo method was invented by a New Zealand guy (a physics teacher) some 20 years ago who wanted to feed his eight children healthily. The method is shown below - and it has to be said that it is simple.

You mix the powder with water in one of their plastic jars, pour boiling water into the thermos (for that is what it is), place the jar in the thermos and leave to set. So Ok it's pretty simple, but you really don't need to do it this way.

I have a now very old 'yoghurt maker' made by Decor way back. Really it is also just a thermos jug, but this one came with a glass jar that fitted snugly inside and a thermometer. For it was ever so slightly more complicated. You heated the milk to just below boiling - 95 degrees I seem to remember - poured it into the jar, added a big spoonful of natural yoghurt, whisked it all together, put it in the thermos and left it overnight. Hey presto - and I must get it out and do it again because it was really easy and really worked very well. Of course I am lucky and have the big thermos, but I have also seen various suggestions like wrapping your jar in a warm blanket. The aim is just to keep it warm for a few hours - an esky might do the trick, or a turned off oven. I saw one suggestion of an esky with a hot water bottle in it.

I also read that it has been discovered that reusing those plastic jars over and over again is not a good idea - bad things leach into the yoghurt. Which may or may not be true. But you could always replace the plastic jar with a glass one.

I also think this is an expensive way to make your own yoghurt, although cheaper than bought fresh yoghurt - just. A packet of Easiyo stuff costs almost $5.00 which is considerably more than a litre of milk which is all you need for my method. Once you have made one batch you can use it as the starter for all future batches. And I think the batch is rather larger than the one from Easiyo.

I guess the Easiyo method is cheaper than buying the 'real' thing in the dairy aisle and yes, lots of those premade yoghurts have additives and things in them but you can check that out. There are lots of yoghurts claiming to be 'organic' and 'natural' and all that, with healthy things like chia, acai and goji berries in them. And if you want to flavour your home-made yoghurt with fruit, well just chop up some fruit and put it in it.

So me - I'm not convinced. Give the 'real' method a go. Just be sure to use a plain yoghurt with a live culture in it. Mind you I don't think I ever checked to see whether the culture was live or not. Surely it is? (Another post topic maybe.)

And before I leave this - I originally googled yoghurt powder - because that's sort of what I thought it was. Yoghurt that had been dried in some way. Which I suppose it sort of is, but not quite. Anyway I came across a site with 10 suggestions for what to do with yoghurt powder. Though it seemed to me that you could use fresh yoghurt instead for most of them. You could have a look at that. Or buy someone an Easiyo kit for Christmas! It will cost you around $30.00. Well we do all get a bit desperate round about now. Yoghurt is good though. I don't think anyone will argue with that.

POSTSCRPT: Just to show how full of coincidence life is look at this photo that one of my followers sent me. He lives in Kuala Lumpur and when he went into his local supermarket he was confronted with this.

Creepy - sort of.