What food do you miss when you're away from home?

Beer/yogurt/bread/kombucha. Not a complete list of fermentation for consumption. But gas-phase production stands apart as so many have learned.

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If this topic goes flat, we could talk about foods that we never ever miss not having.

 

Years ago, a family member was given, by a colleague at work if I remember right, a cup of Herman.

Herman was a live-culture dough that you could feed in the fridge for a few days and then make into:

1. Cinnamon rolls
2. Cups of Herman to give your other friends
3. More Herman for the fridge, which you could feed for a few days and make into:
   • Cinnamon rolls
   • Cups of Herman to give still other of your friends
   • More Herman for the fridge, which ...

It is a lovely thing until you grow tired of tending Herman in the fridge and of making cinnamon rolls, or finding friends to give some Herman to.

If you grow less attentive to Herman in the fridge, Herman will notice, and coat your fridge shelves and other food items with sticky gloopy dough.

This can be the start of a downward relationship spiral, as Herman's attention-seeking behaviors fall short of rekindling your affection.

It reached the point where family member called it quits on that relationship, poured Herman lock, stock, and barrel into one of those quite robust green glass Gallo wine bottles, screwed the metal cap on tight, and buried him in the trash bag beneath the counter, with the old empty soup cans and all. That showed him.

After the blast, there were flattened soup cans all across the kitchen, and shards of green Gallo glass that took effort to pry out of the walls of the room.

It was just as well we were all in another room when it went.

My yogurt beasties do their work in an Instant Pot, to cater to their delicate thermophilic sensibilities. But the Instant Pot, while capable of being a pressure vessel, is used with the valve open for that job, so they don't get to make any kabooms.

 

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

 

Not as exciting, but a former boss used work with Aspergillus niger. A fungus important for making citric acid. It can force its way through the gaskets of bolted down bioreactors.

Fortunately, I can have a laid back relationship with kombucha. The worse to happen is the jar over foaming with mixing.

 

Aspergillus niger is very exciting. I am surprised to learn (just now) that it is used for industrial synthesis of citric acid. Along with other useful products.
But dang, aspergillosis can be very bad disease. It's a main reason why I advise students handling soils and leaves (and especially while grinding them) to mask up in lab. Sometimes they do

 

Our SCOBY is now over 20 years old. I don't even remember where I got the very original batch.

We also had milk kefir and water kefir growing in jars for many years. But they are only 5 years old.

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Oddly, if I pay more attention to what's on offer at the store, I seem to find pectin or gelatin being unavoidable in nonfat yogurts, but absent in (at least some) whole-milk yogurts.

What I'm making at home, though, I'm making with powdered milk. (I remember disliking, in childhood, the taste of powdered milk for drinking, but it seems to make perfectly decent yogurt. And I can keep enough around for long enough that the question "do I need to make yogurt tonight?" is never complicated by "and do I have milk for it?".)

And the powdered milk I use is nonfat. In fact, that's the only kind of powdered milk I've seen 'round here.

And I don't put any pectin or gelatin in the yogurt, and it turns out nice and firm.

How come that seems to work for me?

 

I guess for powdered milk you'd want that to be fat-free for shelf stability, fats go rancid eventually.

How long does your yogurt maintain its texture? Long enough to ship it through a regional distribution hub and into a grocery store with another 10 days remaining before the date on the lid?

Just a theory.

 

Any idea what bugs are in your culture? Is your yogurt actually sour like store bought was when I was a kid?

To be labeled yogurt, the bacteria in the starter are defined, but not the ratio between the species. The producers have reduced the amount of the one the makes the sour taste to expand sales to more people. The pH difference likely changes the curdling amount in the milk, thus the gelatin or pectin.

I liked the greek yogurt cause it was sour like the old yogurt, but they might be going the same way.

Whole powdered milk exists. Coworker that spent time in Africa was disappointed he could only get nonfat in US stores.

 

What bugs, who knows? They came originally from some store-bought yogurt I froze a couple tablespoons of. Then I go on saving tablespoons of whatever I make. My kitchen has no biosafety level, so the bugs are whatever came from the store plus whatever else found their way in. The success of the project seems to rely less on sterility than on Malthus, the thermophilic yogurt-adapted bugs outcompeting whatever else. The proportions surely change according to who was most successful in the last batch. Now and then I'll get some more from the store just to kind of reset the proportions.

The texture of mine seems to actually improve with time, at least over the handful of days I can keep a quart around. It's even firmer after a day in the fridge than warm from the Instant Pot, and can sometimes almost be sliced by the time I'm using the last of it.

 

I may have spoken too soon about the store brands: Meijer, it turns out, sells a not-quite-nonfat (1.5%) plain yogurt, uses no pectin or gelatin, and the consistency is just fine.

 

Plain seems to be the only way to get yogurt without added extras.

 

I pretty much stick to buying a regional brand of yogurt from a family creamery started in 1960 and has a long history related to the GRATEFUL DEAD rock group and the book "One flew over the cuckoo's nest."
Our Family - Nancy's Probiotic Foods

They were the first to add acidophilus...probiotics to commercial yogurt.
kris

 

Even so, many commercial "plain"s seem to be using pectin or gelatin to artificially thicken it up, like making jell-o ... which puzzles me, because mine ends up with a nice sturdy consistency without such tricks, and so does the Meijer 1.5%.

 

I suspect it has to do with the number of specific lactic acid bacteria they. Food regulations only specify what species need to be in the starter for the product to be labeled yogurt, not the amount. In order to appeal to more people, the producers use less of the more productive acid producers to get a less sour product. Lower acid also means less curdling of the proteins, and a less firm setting.

 

White Castles.

 

On a related note, how much do you think it might impair setting to incubate in an Instant Pot in a moving car?

 

Pends.....

How much do you value the interior?

 

I couldn't say. I've only helped out with making cheese.

 

+1 on White Castle

Sometimes I just missed just the most simple foods.
While in training in Japan we went native and ate as the natives did enjoying their varied and interesting cuisine in Japan.
One night while out in Nagoya we came up on a Pizza Hut and went in ordered and were all set to get a taste of home and comfort food we were used to - we ordered a large cheese pizza to split up - imagine our surprise when it can to the table with a topping of yellow kernel corn. We ate it-but -well - we learned a lesson- the next time we order pizza at a Pizza Hut in Japan make sure to have them hold the corn.