I am still loving the pea protein ‘Like Milk’ in my tea and on my cereal. The next items on my dairy hit-list were yogurt and cheese.
Previously I had been making yogurt with a 1980s yogurt maker my parents passed on to me. It’s simply a glass jar with an insulated plastic container that the jar sits snugly in. The process is simple - heat milk to 85 degrees Celsius, allow to cool to 45 degrees and then add a spoonful of pre-made yogurt as the starter culture, transfer to yogurt maker and allow to cool (and hopefully set) overnight.
Here’s the supermarket soy yogurt I used as a starter.
I tried this same process but with soy milk and soy yogurt for the starter and it did not set. There are a few possibilities for why it failed that I will bear in mind for my next attempt - 1: when I used to do this with dairy milk, at the point of adding the starter culture I would also add a heaped spoonful of powdered milk to make the yogurt thicker and richer. I did not do this. I will try it next time. We only have dairy milk powder so I will try using it and if it works I will buy some soy milk powder; 2: it might be that it’s just too cold here (see previous post), in which case I could try doing it one night when we’ve been using the oven and leave it in the oven with the door open so that it can get some residual heat; 3: maybe there just isn’t the right amount of fat in plant-based milks and yogurts for this technique to ever work.
Heating milk.
I have made quite a few simple cheeses at home with dairy milk in the past. The most simple ‘cheese’ for the amateur cheese maker is ricotta. The process for ricotta is - slowly heat milk to 85 degrees, stirring occasionally, then add about 60 mL / litres of milk of white vinegar or lemon juice to make the milk curd. Separate curds and whey and drain. Again I followed the same process using soy milk.
Ricotta curds
The result was not too bad. It didn’t have a very milky taste (obviously - it didn’t come from a cow, goat or sheep!) but it had the right texture. So, result - we had some as a garnish on our dinner the other night (roasted sprouts and Jerusalem artichoke with green lentils and radicchio) and we’re saving the rest to have on raisin toast for this weekend.
Next up, I will try the yogurt again and use dairy milk powder to see if there’s any chance that it will set. I also plan to make a cheat’s vegan chèvre that will follow a similar process to the ricotta but with a twist.
Dinner