So finally the Caspian Sea Yogurt dried culture has arrived and I am so excited. I am giddy like a little schoolboy who has just received his first Playstation 3. Well, not really. Hardly get excited about something these days. Probably because I am getting old and things get boring and monotonous to me very fast.

As you guys should know by way, I have been making yogurt for some time. Yes, regular yogurt. The kind that taste tangy and tart. No, unlike those you find in our local supermarkets, plain home made yogurt is kind of sour because there is no additional sweetener or cream. But unlike those you find in the supermarkets, home made yogurt are usually free from additives, preservatives or other nonsense. What you get is pure yogurt (unless of course you add them yourself). What I am saying is that if you are looking for pure yogurt, you have no other choice but to make them yourself. And what plain home made yogurt lacks in the taste department, it more than makes up for the freshness and the health benefits it confer to its host. Just think of all those good bacteria helping to maintain a healthy digestive system for you.

However, I have found a solution for the sourness and tartness of the regular yogurt – we call it the Caspian Sea Yogurt or Matsoni to be exact. It hails from the republic of Georgia. It doesn’t taste tart (well, a bit but it taste more bland than tart, you can even feel some sweetness as well) and is very easy to make. More so than regular yogurt where you need to maintain a relatively high temperature in order for the yogurt cultures to do its work of converting milk sugars (lactose) to lactic acid and lactase which forms curds. Caspian Sea Yogurt cultures does it at room temperature. So you don’t need any additional equipment (like a heating pad or a yogurt maker) to make this Caspian Sea Yogurt! Just do it on your tabletop.

The Caspian Sea Yogurt dried culture in a cotton ball. I bought this from eBay. The eBay store is Nick’s Natural Nooks. You can access their eBay listing here. Doesn’t look appealing does it? However, we must understand that this is a dried culture, which means that the yogurt on the cotton ball has been fan dried. If you have seen dried yogurt, you would not be surprised to see the colour has changed significantly. Caspian Sea Yogurt is white in colour!

Another view of the Caspian Sea Yogurt dried culture.

Here, I have placed the dried culture into my yogurt container. Yes, I am using the Easiyo Yogurt maker jar but you can use any wide mouth container – best to have a glass container. But food grade plastic will do fine. You will not leave it for months anyway, just about 16-24 hours for it to ferment. Oh, ensure that the container is very very clean. Make sure you use soap and scrub off all particles and dirt from the container. You don’t want other bacteria to come in and contaminate your yogurt. For me, I use sanitizer like Iodophor to sanitize my container. If you don’t have Iodophor (which is basically food grade stabilized Iodine), you can use a little bleach with water and let it stand for a few minutes. Remember to thoroughly rinse off any bleach after sanitizing your container – you do not want to kill off the Caspian Sea Yogurt cultures.

I add fresh milk. The instruction from the seller tells me to use a small amount first but I sort of ignored it. In Singapore, our temperature is warmer than what the US faced, so the yogurt culture should have enough heat to ferment this (nearly) 1 litre of milk in 24 hours.

As you can see from the above picture, I have placed the yogurt container in a bucket of water. This is to prevent any insects from reaching the milk/yogurt. That would be horrible. The reason is that we will not be closing the cover tight because for this Caspian Sea Yogurt Culture, they need oxygen in order to do their work, unlike regular yogurt which requires little or no oxygen.

I loosely cover the container. We don’t want any nasties to fall into our milk. Again, that would be horrible. After that, best to place the bucket and yogurt container some place where it is cool and undisturbed. I ferment this yogurt for 24hours. I would like a firmer yogurt.

After 24 hours, I open the cover and yes, we have yogurt! Hooray! Isn’t life great? You can see a little whey at the sides which is okay. The whey is a normal “byproduct” of the yogurt making. And if you take a spoon and scoop a little of the yogurt out, you will find that it has a very different texture from regular yogurt. Sort of creamy and a bit more sticky than regular yogurt. Some say it feels like honey. The amount of whey is significantly less than what you find in regular yogurt so don’t worry. And the taste? Well, it taste just wonderful. Very little tang and hardly any tartness. But seriously very bland. Not to worry, just add a little honey or some fruits and you would have made yourself a fine dessert. No wonder the Japanese love this stuff so much.

Well, I hope that you guys would experiment with other types of yogurt other than those normal s.thermophilus and l.bulgaricus yogurt. In fact, there are like Piima Yogurt, Viili Yogurt, Fil Mjolk Yogurt, Buttermilk and Greek Yogurt cultures available online! Don’t worry, it should be safe, people have been consuming these yogurts for centuries and they are actually living very healthy and long lives. Ciao!

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