Homemade Yogurt

While dairy is definitely in a grey zone, we known that some of its constituents, like the fat (butter), contain a host of health promoting benefits.

Yogurt is another one of those foods that can offer a lot of health benefits without too much possible drawbacks. As you probably know, yogurt is milk that has been fermented by strains of lactic acid producing bacteria. For this reason, yogurt is a good source of probiotics, which are beneficial bacteria.

Apart from the satisfaction of making it yourself, homemade yogurt is much cheaper than store bought yogurt and you stay in control of the ingredients you use. You can therefore use the best quality organic and grass-fed whole milk and even raw milk instead of the regular milk coming from improperly fed and treated cows.

Even more so, if you ferment it long enough, the bacteria will consume all the lactose, which is a type of sugar in milk that can often cause problems.

In the end, homemade yogurt is an amalgam of bacteria, fat and proteins (casein and whey). Yet, some people might still be worried with the casein content of yogurt. Casein is a protein found in milk that has been shown to cause problems for some people, especially combined with the immune disrupting effects of gluten. Most of the cows raised for milk in North-America produce a milk with a type of casein called A1. Many people who reported having problems with dairy experience relief from either raw milk, goat’s milk or sheep’s milk. Goats and sheep produce A2 casein, which has been shown not to cause the problems that A1 causes.

Still, if you can’t get raw milk, goats milk or sheep’s milk and are worried by the casein content of yogurt, there is another alternative: sour cream. Sour cream is simply fermented cream instead of fermented milk. Cream, heavy cream that is, only contains traces of lactose and casein while the caloric content comes from fat (butter fat). Homemade sour cream is also a great way to get an even better dose of healthy saturated fat. Keep in mind that sour cream made with heavy cream is very rich and filling. Much more so than most store bought sour cream, which is probably made from half and half cream.

The fermentation of cream will of course consume the sugars even more thoroughly than fermented milk. Crème fraiche, a French specialty, is a variation of sour cream that probably only differs in the fermentation time and strains introduced.

Keep in mind that while sour cream or yogurt are excellent to make thick and tangy sauces for your favorite paleo dishes, they’ll lose their probiotic properties when heated. Beef stroganoff is probably the most well known dish where the sauce often contains sour cream.

They are a very versatile addition to the diet that go along well with sweet and savory dishes. Serving yogurt or sour cream flavored with your favorite fresh herbs over slices of roast beef, pork or chicken is absolutely delicious. On the sweet side, dark chocolate, mint, vanilla or berries mixed with yogurt or sour cream make for an excellent and healthy dessert. Tsadziki, the popular Greek sauce made with yogurt, cucumbers and garlic also goes well with virtually anything.

The idea of making your own yogurt might seem a little complex, but once you get the hang of it, it all becomes pretty simple and straight forward. You don’t even need much in terms of kitchen equipment. After all, a yogurt maker is simply a device that keeps the yogurt warm during the fermentation process. I much prefer simply putting my batch in an oven with the light open and the door closed. It doesn’t cost a thing and you can do as much as you want. A thermometer to check the temperature of the milk or oven is nice to have handy, but not mandatory.

As for ingredients, you only need good quality whole milk or cream and a bacterial starter of some kind. Yogurt starters can be bought online at places like GI Pro Health, Cultures for Health or Custom Probiotics. Crème fraiche is often started with butter milk and you can even try without a starter if you decide to use raw milk. The natural bacteria in the milk will ferment it just fine.

Another good and cheap alternative is to use a bit of leftover yogurt from your previous batch or from commercial yogurt with live bacteria. Companies that sell powder starter formulations usually advice to start with fresh starter every time, but as long as your yogurt tastes like yogurt and holds like yogurt, you can use leftover yogurt. Either way, a bottle of yogurt starter in powder form will last you for a long time because you’ll use only a very small amount per batch.

Without further ado, here are the instructions for a yogurt or sour cream fermented for 24 hours so all the lactose gets digested by the bacteria. It’s my preferred way to make it because it’s a simple process and I prefer not having any lactose when I don’t have to. It also produces a nice and tangy yogurt. This is a yogurt that is SCD complient. SCD (specific carbohydrate diet) is a diet created to treat digestive issues ranging from IBS and IBD to Crohn’s and even autism. It is very similar to the paleo diet, but differs in the sense that it focuses heavily on probiotic foods and elimination of any form of starch.

1 quart (4 cups) whole milk or cream (pastured, grass-fed or raw are the best choices);Powder bacterial starter or 1/4 cup good quality plain yogurt with live culturesMost people like to sterilize their tools beforehand by boiling them for a least ten minutes. I tend to be on the lazy side though and I’ve had nothing but great results simply by thoroughly washing all my instruments in very hot water and letting them air dry (dish towels often contain bacteria). The only danger of not sterilizing is that other bacteria can overpower your starter and the yogurt doesn’t end up looking or tasting like yogurt.Pour the milk in a heavy bottomed pan and let it heat at a medium low temperature making sure you stir often so it doesn’t scorch. The more fat in your milk, the less chance it will burn. You want to bring the milk to at least 180 F. Use either a thermometer making sure to stir before taking a measure or if you don’t have a thermometer look for small bubbles that form around the edges of the pan. This process kills off any other bacteria so the starter can have to whole place to play.Before introducing the starter, cool the milk to around room temperature. The fastest way to do that is to pour the heated milk in the glass jar/bottles that you’ll use for the fermentation and to put those jar/bottles in a cold water bath. You can then stir the milk to make the process happen even faster. If you put the starter in a milk that’s too hot, you’ll kill it.If using a powdered starter, follow their instructions as for the quantity to use. I like to work in one bigger glass jar instead of smaller glass bottles because it’s simpler to clean afterwards. I find that the 4 cups glass measuring cups are ideal for both cooling the milk, mixing the starter and fermenting the yogurt. If you use multiple bottle, you might want to have the cooled milk in on jar to mix-in the starter so you can be more accurate about the quantity. If using leftover yogurt, prepare a paste of about 1/2 cup of the cooled milk with the 1/4 cup leftover yogurt. Mix-in this paste to the rest of the cooled milk.Close up the bottles or cover the jar with plastic wrap and put in an oven with the light open. This is where things can get a little bit touchy because the fermentation temperature is pretty important for the success of your yogurt. The temperature inside the oven should stay around 100 and 110 F and you can place a thermometer in the oven to know for sure. Most ovens will do just fine when simply keeping the light open. If it becomes too hot, you can open up the door just a tad. For those ovens that don’t become hot enough, you can buy a stronger light bulb, like a 60w one and use it when making yogurt. You can also heat the oven to the lowest temperature (usually around 170 F) and than turn it off and reheat it several hours later when the temperature has dropped too much.Let the milk ferment for about 24 hours. The lactose should be completely digested by 24 hours, but you can let the fermentation go for longer without problem.Place the jar of bottles in the refrigerator to cool and enjoy! You might sometimes end-up with a yogurt that is a bit more liquid than commercial yogurt, but often the taste won’t suffer. It all depends on the quantity and strength of the starter and temperature during the fermentation process. Most of the time though, it should come out just fine. Be aware though that once you take the fermented yogurt out of the oven it will still be runny, bit it will solidify as it cools.

I like to make a soft cheese from time to time with my finished yogurt or sour cream. Sour cream effectively becomes cream cheese and it’s absolutely delicious. Yogurt also takes the same texture as cream cheese, only more tangy. Its ridiculously easy to make. Be sure the yogurt or sour cream has cooled in the refrigerated and line a fine colander with paper towels or layers of cheese cloth. Pour the yogurt or sour cream in the colander and then hang the colander over a pan, cover and let strain for 6 to 8 hours in the refrigerator or not. Some people like to attach the cheese cloth with a string and make it hang over their sink. The liquid that gets strained is water with whey protein. You can discard it, but you can also keep it and drink it, whey is a good quality protein.

I hope you’ll like making and enjoying this delicious fermented creation and that your gut will thank you for all those nice little buggers you feed it. Dairy might be in a grey zone on a Paleo diet, but sometimes the benefits outweigh the potential problems. It might just be the case with yogurt.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Paleo cookbooks. It’s basically two cookbooks that were put together by Nikki Young and they are of great help when I’m out of ideas about what to prepare. The cookbooks would definitely be a good addition to your Paleo cooking arsenal.

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Photos: Yogurt with fruits and nuts, yogurt in measuring cup, yogurt with chives, preparation, straining

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Benefits of the Paleo Diet

If you are going on the Paleo diet to lose weight, you know its benefits there. But did you know that it can help you with chronic diseases and disorders as well? Diseases or conditions as diverse as asthma, diabetes, kidney stones and osteoporosis can be improved or even cured with the Paleo diet. Let's go over some of its benefits:

Losing Weight with the Paleo Diet

To lose weight we must burn more calories than we take in. We've been told for years that the best way to do this is to eat a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. However, most people on low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets struggle with it. They are hungry all the time, and weight lost is often regained rapidly or within a few months after they lose it. Low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets were hot for a while, but were nothing more than a short term fix, because in the long run this diet is unhealthy because of its reliance upon fats at the expense of fruits and vegetables.

The Paleo diet imitates what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate - a high-protein, high-fruit and vegetable diet with moderate amounts of fat, but with high amounts of omega-3 and monounsaturated fats. Protein has two to three times the fat-burning effect of either fat or carbohydrates, so it revs up your metabolism, speeding up your weight loss. Also, protein has a much greater satiety value than either fat or carbohydrate, so it lowers your appetite. Higher protein diets have been proven over and over to be more effective than low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets in promoting weight loss.

Syndrome X diseases

The diet that the average person heats is high in sugar and grains. This raises insulin and blood sugar levels. Excessive insulin and blood sugar levels are known to promote a cluster of diseases called Syndrome X. These diseases include obesity, hypertension, high 'bad' cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, and gout. You do not eat grains and sugar on the Paleo diet, but you do eat carbohydrates in the form of unlimited fruits and vegetables. The carbohydrates in the Paleo Diet are  low-glycemic, meaning that they cause a slow rise in your blood sugar and insulin levels. The high fiber, protein, and omega-3 fats in the Paleo Diet will also help to prevent Syndrome X diseases.

Other Disorders

Because of the unlimited amounts of fruits and vegetables permitted on the Paleo Diet, your body will be slightly alkaline, so diseases and disease symptoms caused by an acid/base imbalance will improve or even be cured. These diseases include osteoporosis, kidney stones, asthma, hypertension, and many others. Also, the high amounts of soluble-fiber in the Paleo Diet will improve most diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, and the high omega-3 fat content will improve most of the inflammatory diseases.

The Paleo diet is a great way to improve our health and become lean and strong. While is certainly true that hunter-gatherers in ancient societies died young, most deaths were related to a life spent living  without modern medical care. They didn't have the chronic degenerative diseases that run rampant in our modern society. In hunter-gatherer populations today, the elderly people are generally free of chronic disease. Obesity, high blood pressure are virtually unknown. But when these people adopt western diets, their health declines, and they show all the same 'diseases of civilization' that we have in modern societies. 

What is the Paleo Diet?

Paleo is a simple dietary lifestyle that is based on foods that were eaten in the Paleolithic Era, and those foods alone. Those foods include meat, fish, nuts and seeds, vegetables, and  fruits. With the Paleo diet, you do not eat Neolithic Era foods that came after agriculture or animal husbandry were widespread. These foods include grains, dairy, beans/legumes, potatoes, sugar, and foods with lots of chemicals. Followers of the Paleo diet say that by eating the foods that we are genetically adapted to eat, you will become naturally lean, have acne-free skin, improved athletic performance, and experience relief from  metabolic-related and autoimmune diseases.

Our ancestors mostly ate foods that were easiest to hunt or gather where they were. As nomads we would have adapted to various mixes of foods. The amount of food consumed is up to the individual. You can make it meat heavy if you want, add more fruit and vegetables if you prefer, as long as the foods you eat are paleo. You may consume a raw food diet, as long as it falls into the paleo diet guidelines. You should eat when you are hungry, not at set times of the day. Your ancestors hunted in anticipation of hunger, and ate they needed to eat. You should do the same.

Oils should be restricted to those from fruits, such as olive oil, or palm oil, or from nuts, like walnut oil or coconut oil. Wild game meat is best, but grass-fed meat can be used as a serviceable substitute. No processed meats should be eaten, and you don't have to restrict the amount of fat you eat. Fish should be wild-caught. For everything else, organic is preferred, as you want your food to be natural and free of pollutants.

Eat the greatest variety of foods possible. You should use herbs and spices, as these were readily available and will make your food tasty. You shouldn't use sugar, or corn syrup. The only paleo sweetener is honey, and it should be eaten in small quantities. You could also use a small amount of coconut palm sugar. Salt should not be added to your food. After taking salt out of your diet, your taste buds will adjust and you won't miss it. The same thing happens with sugar. 

The only beverage that is paleo is water. Drink only when you are thirsty. If you want caffeine, green tea is the most paleo, because it is the least processed.

Paleo foods are nutrient dense, and supplements are not necessary. Vitamin D is the one exception to this. Many of us don't get enough sun, and if you don't eat liver regularly, you might need to take extra Vitamin D. Also, if you don't eat fish often, fish oil is another way to get Omega 3 fatty acids. The rest of your diet should be sufficient for your body's needs.

The Paleo diet will make you lean and healthy. It will lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, acne, gastrointestinal disease, autoimmune diseases, and more. Eat as your ancestors did, and start toward optimal health today.