Yogurt and Jocoque natural

First, although yogurt, jocoque and buttermilk all are formed by various (but different) lactobacilli, the process for making them is nearly the same. Actually, filtered buttermilk is closer to jocoque seco than is filtered yogurt.

Yogurt, bring your milk up to 120F (49C), allow to cool slightly, add 1 cup of natural yogurt (there is one brand, available all over México, that is unsweetened natural yogurt with no additives, but I can't remember the brand name right now.), MAINTAIN the mixture at a temperature between 100F (38C) and the 120F (49C) for several hours (depending on just how much milk you are converting to yogurt) until the yogurt coagulates. Refrigerate immediately! VOILA!

Jocoque, bring your milk up to 86F (30C), add 1 cup of natural jocoque and maintain at approximately this temperature for several hours, although room temperature, if it's not lower than about 75F (24C), will work fine, just a bit slower, until the jocoque coagulates. Refrigerate immediately. If you want jocoque seco, filter off the liquid (whey) once the jocoque is chilled.

Buttermilk, with your milk at room temperature (although the process is slow if less than 70F (21C)), add 1 cup of any good LOCAL brand (in the U.S. or Canada) of cultured buttermilk and allow to set (COVERED) several hours until the buttermilk coagulates. Refrigerate immediately.

Both natural yogurt and natural buttermilk made in this manner are delicious. Both may have the liquid filtered off once chilled, making, respectively, what's often called yogurt cheese or buttermilk cheese, in various U.S. natural foods cookbooks or in many places on the Internet.

Note: Be certain not to use the last unfiltered cup of what you make with the recipes above, as that last cup can be used in place of the commercial products for making your next batch.

Note: If you want to continue using your homemade product as starter for the next batch, be sure that the milk being coagulated is ALWAYS COVERED with, at the very least, a damp cloth, and that you have used sterilized containers all the way through the process, otherwise your homemade product will sooner or later, depending on how careful you are, pickup wild yeasts and bacteria from the air and get a yeasty flavor or "off" flavor. I sterilize the pans and containers I use by rinsing them internally with a small amount of undiluted Cloro (Clorox), then rinsing them again with chlorinated city water, then allowing them to air-dry upside down until I need them. That's sufficient sterilization for this process.

Alpura plain unsweetened yogurt is the best I've found. And the only place that sells it in our area is Walmart in Manzanillo

I've heard that if you strain regular yogurt, it will become greek yogurt. Anyone know if that works? I've not found greek yogurt here but it would be easy to put the Alpura in cheesecloth in the refrigerator overnight if that would do it.

hmmm, maybe there is some other difference between the two. I found some loose, cotton fabric and use that as cheesecloth. I used it recently to strain cooked squash so it would be thicker for pumpkin pies. I think I'll try it and see how it tastes.

When I lived in Egypt, sour cream wasn't available, so I used coffee filters to "turn yoghurt into sour cream" (really more like labnah, which I think is similar to Greek yoghurt). I just put the filter in one of those plastic Melitta filter holders with a fridge container underneath, dumped the yoghurt in, and left it overnight or longer. But the yoghurt was different there, particularly in consistency, and the taste was also a bit stronger. What we get in Mexico seems creamier, maybe more homogenized, so I haven't tried it here.

Kate

Mmm, so jealous. How long did you live in Egypt? I bet you picked up some very delicious recipes while there! Do share :)

The sugar listed on the Alpura container is the natural milk sugar.

Also, the temperatures I listed in my post about making the various cultured milk products are PROVEN temperatures, as I have used all three of the procedures here in Mazatlán. The max temperature is important, since if you exceed this in the various procedures you run the risk of killing off the working lactobacilli. If that happens, the milk mixture won't coagulate, it will just go bad, i.e., sour, and separate into a layer of spoiled curds and a layer of whey. Definitely NOT what you want. If not refrigerated more-or-less immediately after the mixtures coagulate, they will do the same thing, particularly the buttermilk. In this case, the end product will still be usable if thoroughly mixed, but it will have poor texture and possibly be a bit more sour.