Update 6/9/14: When I first started blogging I used a variety of different yogurts, but these days I have found my one and only favorite by far! Trader Joe’s European Style Organic Plain Whole Milk Yogurt which is actually from the Straus Family Creamery. The same yogurt can be found at Whole Foods under the Straus label, but it is more expensive. You can tell its from Strauss by looking up the plant number on whereismymilkfrom.com. The taste of this yogurt is superb! Creamy, tangy, smooth and from a great dairy, Straus, one that I feel good about getting our dairy from. Also there is a lot of evidence to suggest that full fat dairy is better for our health than non-fat and low-fat due to the way it is processed. Bring on the real food! 

I really like trying to make everything from scratch. But really, at the end of the day there are certain things you can buy ready made that are fantastic and so time saving. This post is about yogurt.

We have a yogurt maker. You might be thinking, what is a yogurt maker? You don’t really need any gadget to make yogurt…You just need a warm place to let it sit. But while it never gets very cold in LA, it really isn’t warm enough most of the year for the yogurt to culture. Also, we don’t have an oven with a constant pilot light. Therefore I just had to get a yogurt maker which is really just a warming plate with a lid. It comes with little jars, but you can just put any ole container in there. But while I thought it would be great to have homemade yogurt, I realized that it just isn’t really worth it. We go through a lot of yogurt and it is too hard to keep enough ready to go. Also, a few batches I made were really nice, but others got grainy. In summary, it is just too much trouble!

That being said, I found that the yogurt maker is great for other things! It will ferment appam (in the picture above – the one bread I got right!) and dosa (which I haven’t gotten right yet) and I bet it is also good for pizza dough and bread recipes.

Here are a few of the kinds we use. Tejas likes Dannon, but unfortunately, our Vons doesn’t have it (weird) and other regular grocery stores are out of the way. The red Trader Joe’s one is new, recommended by the cashier as being smooth and tart. I just tried it and it is good! I love the middle eastern Moomtaz, but it is very tart and strong and goes well with rich dishes like rajma masala (kidney beans) and chaat. The Trader Joe’s Nonfat is more mild and great with subjis. The Verka is kind of in the middle, full fat and creamy but not as strong and tart as the Moomtaz. We’ll see how the new TJ’s one holds up.