Sheep Yogurt
Here is a very simple recipe for sheep yogurt. You can scale this up or down to suit your needs and you can also use others types of milk for this recipe. Cow milk for a milder taste, goat for a little more flavor and sheep for the most flavor. Sheep milk tends to make the most flavorful cheeses, in my opinion anyway, so it's no surprise that it also makes the most flavorful yogurt. Ingredients:
One small container of your favorite brand of yogurt or yogurt starter.
1 gallon of sheep milk
Materials:
One large pot
4 quart sized containers
An oven
1. Heat you gallon of sheep milk in a pot and slowly bring it up to 160-180 degrees Fahrenheit. This will help to break the milk proteins down.
2. Let the milk cool to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Add your store-bought yogurt or yogurt culture and mix thoroughly.
4. Pour the newly inoculated milk into the 4 quart containers in equal portions.
5. Place the containers, being sure they don't spill, in your cool oven. Turn the oven light on to give the yogurt a tiny bit of heat.
6. Leave the yogurt to sit in the oven for 3-6 hours.
7. After 3-6 hour hours, enjoy your fresh homemade sheep yogurt! The yogurt will be firm right out of the even but will firm up even more in the refrigerator. Refrigerate any yogurt you do not consume and store it in the fridge until it is all gone, just like any store bought yogurt.
Choosing your yogurt starter:
You have two options in selecting your starter, well there are many options but two paths to get your yogurt starter. You can either buy a small container of yogurt. Use your favorite brand for a similar homemade product. Or you can use just buy the starter from a place that sells cheese and yogurt cultures. The easiest way is to just stop by your local supermarket and pick up some ready-made yogurt. As you may already know, what makes milk into yogurt is the bacteria that grows in it. This is of course and safe and even healthy bacteria for use to ingest. Most commercial brands of yogurt contain the same strains of bacteria. Once your make your first batch of yogurt, you can continue using some yogurt from the first batch to make the second batch and so on and so forth. If after a while you find that the yogurt isn't reaching the flavor or consistancy as your previous batches then it may be time to start with a fresh yogurt culture.
Greek Yogurt:
Sheep Yogurt is an excellent candidate for making Greek Yogurt. We all know Greek Yogurt as the firmer style of yogurt which also has a higher protein content than other types of yogurt. This is because Greek yogurt contains less water than those other types of yogurt. If you want to make a nice Greek Yogurt from your Sheep's milk just follow the simple yogurt recipe above then once your yogurt is ready, scoop it into a very fine meshed strainer or cheesecloth. Allow it to strain for 12 to 24 hours. Scoop it back into a clean container. Store it in the refrigerator and enjoy your fresh homemade sheep milk greek yogurt!
Yogurt Makers:
If you feel that the above process is too involved for you or you just want a fool proof yogurt making method then you can always go out and purchase a commercial Yogurt Maker. Generally what these do is keep your bacteria-inoculated milk at the optimum temperature for bacterial growth and the perfect yogurt. There are many brands out there. People seem to really like the Euro Cuisine Automatic Yogurt Maker
