1 Month with Karatay and Making Yogurt at Home – Kitchen Secrets – Practical Recipes
Dear Sinem Karatay continues to share her diet recipes and experiences with usβ¦
I know it’s been a long time since I wrote. It has now been more than a month since I started the Karatay Diet. Meanwhile, in the middle of summer, I had a very serious, microbial throat infection and I had no time to write because of the things to do about school. I got better, I relaxed my schoolwork a little bit and I’m here again.
As I said, it has been more than 1 month since I started the Karatay Diet, or rather, eating and living as recommended by Canan Karatay, we can say 40 days. In this time period, I have become very used to eating this way. In total, I lost 5.5 kilos. I had some escapades in between, there were days when I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t pay attention when I was sick. But I am proud of having lost 5.5 kilos. It’s 7 kilos left π It doesn’t seem like it will be very fast after that, but I’m sure that I will gradually reach the weight I want in the long run.
I have mentioned the subject of yogurt in my previous articles. Ms. Canan Karatay recommends you make your own yogurt if you can make it at home. At first, I was afraid of where I would find milk to make yogurt at home, what I would ferment it with, how I would mix it, so I bought it from home-style or village-style yogurts, and I even wrote this down.
I recently bought Canan Karatay’s new book, Karatay Cuisine, and started reading it. In fact, after the simple rules and reasons explained in the other two books are briefly explained in the book, many different recipes are included in accordance with the Karatay Diet and lifestyle. These recipes are not only recipes, but also describe how to easily make winter preparations that our grandmothers and grandmothers used to make, such as butter, tomato paste, vinegar, yogurt, curd cheese, tarhana. Considering that the butter I use is sent by my mother from the village, I buy the tomato paste homemade and my mother makes tarhana herself and sends it to me at the end of every summer, I am quite lucky. In the delicatessen next to the house, delicious curd cheeses are sold as well as a wide variety of cheeses. I used to buy the home-village type yogurt, and it was delicious, but there can be no better yogurt than home-made yogurt. My mother buys milk from the milkman she has known for years (now the son of the same milkman) and makes yogurt at home. Home yoghurt is just the consistency I like, slightly watery, more sour than market yoghurts.
Recently, on the day I bought the book, there was no leftover village yogurt that I had bought earlier at the market. So I decided to try the organic yogurt sold in a glass bowl. It tasted pretty similar to my mom’s homemade yogurt. I thought I’d buy this from now on, rather than the village type yogurt. When I got home, I read about making yogurt at home in the book and decided to try it again. I had a previous attempt that ended in failure. The next day, I bought another bowl of the same organic yoghurt from the market (1 bowl because it ends in 1 day:) and I also bought a bottle of daily milk. I fermented my yogurt in a glass bowl left over from the previous day with organic yogurt and daily milk and the result was perfect. Let’s see the recipe:
- 700 ml daily bottle of milk
- 1-2 tablespoons of yogurt
- A pot to boil the milk
- A glass container for fermenting the yogurt
- A large cloth to wrap the yogurt while it is fermenting
- Wooden spoon
I used the glass bowls of the organic yogurts I bought to make yogurt at home. Since 1 glass bowl is 700 ml, I used 700 ml for 1 bowl of yogurt and 1400 ml of daily milk for 2 bowls of yogurt. If you do not know the volume of your container, you can measure the amount of milk you want to make by pouring the milk you will use into your container. We put the measured milk in a saucepan and boil it. Since we use milk daily, it does not need to be boiled for a long time as our mothers boil raw milk. If possible, you should turn off the heat as soon as it starts to boil. A foam and cream will form on it, we do not throw it away or strain it so that our yoghurt can be more viscous. We put the warmed milk in our glass containers and leave it to cool with open mouths. What I will say now is the very mother method, but otherwise it is difficult to regulate the temperature. Milk should cool down to our body temperature, that is, around 37 degrees. There is no need to use a thermometer to understand this, we put our little finger into the milk with the grandmother method and if it is at the same temperature, it means it’s done π If we are fermenting yogurt for the first time, we can use a yogurt that we like to taste (organic or village-house type would be better, prebiotics can also be tried), Although we have fermented before, we put 1-2 spoons of yogurt, which we separated from the last yogurt, into each bowl and mix it completely with a wooden spoon. We close the lids of the containers, wrap them with a cloth and leave them to stand in a corner at room temperature. In the book, it recommends waiting 6-8 hours, but I forgot the yogurt and left the house. In total, it remained wrapped outside for 10-12 hours. Fearing that it might have gone sour when I got home, but knowing there was nothing I could do, I put it in the closet to try my luck, and it stayed in the closet overnight. When I tasted the yogurt the next day, I was quite skeptical, but it tasted perfect. On my second try, I waited for 10 hours with peace of mind, I think I will not wait any less from now on.
Tomorrow I will make my own yogurt for the third time. When I ferment 2 of the glass bowls (700 ml) I mentioned above at once, this yogurt is enough for me for 2 days. You can make more, but remember not to eat the same yogurt for more than a week. Because it is a home made yogurt, it starts to turn sour quickly. If you try to make yogurt when you run out of yogurt at home, you will have to buy yogurt from outside that day. Therefore, do not forget to make a new yogurt 1 day before the yogurt at home runs out.
When I wrote on Twitter that I was trying to make yogurt, I got feedback from my friends that when they put a little cream or milk powder in the milk, the consistency is better. I am very strict about milk powder, I should not use it, and according to Karatay, it should not be used. It seems like a natural cream can be added as daily bottled milks are not too oily compared to raw, freshly expressed milk. But it is necessary to make sure that it is unadulterated. The non-solid consistency of the yogurt I’m making right now suits my taste. If you want it to be thicker, you can add cream, or you can buy raw milk from a trusted place and ferment your yogurt after boiling it well, it’s entirely up to you.
Text & Photograph: Sinem ΓomarlΔ±
