For those who are wondering how in the world one would get a glob from making yogurt….
The process of making yogurt produces a product that is comprised of both curds and whey after the milk (with a starter of some form) has incubated for several hours at 100 degrees F. The longer the incubation time, the more sour the yogurt becomes. Greek yogurts tend to be on the more sour side of the spectrum. Our yogurt incubates for 10 hours, a little longer that what would be needed for whole milk as we are using 1% milk. Regular yogurt is rather soft (depending upon the amount of fat in the milk, the more fat content the thicker the yogurt). Often, yogurt purchased from the store has had a thickener of some sort added to bring it to the consistency that we normally associate with yogurt.
The last couple of years has seen an explosion of Greek style yogurts hitting the market place. They’ve always been around, but recently they have become one of the most favored forms of yogurt. So what’s the difference between regular and Greek style yogurt? There are several differences, but the most significant factor in relationship to the glob is that Greek yogurts tend to be thicker (without additional thickeners) which creates a higher protein content due to the milk proteins being more concentrated. This is accomplished by removing some of the whey from the curds.
The whey is strained from the curds using a fine meshed material letting the force of gravity do the work. After sitting for 2-3 hours the yogurt has become the consistency of what is known as Greek yogurt. But a glob, it is not. So how does it become a glob? Well, when one gets a batch started incubating at noon it is not fully ready for straining until 10pm. Waiting until midnight or 1am for it to become the correct consistency is not a welcome thought. Instead, into the refrigerator it goes to continue straining until the next morning. And, what do you have the next morning? A round glob of Greek yogurt that looks like and is the consistency of a cheese ball. The whey by that point is mostly in the collecting dish located below the strainer. To get the yogurt back to the desired thickness, just mix whey back into the glob.
Thus, the story behind the story, of the glob.
Elsa
Do you do anything with the excess whey?
bg7878
I haven’t but I’ve read that you can use it to replace milk in baking and in soups. I tasted it and ours is very sour. We were wondering if it would work as a substitute for buttermilk in pancakes, for example. Might be worth a try.
Elsa
Let me know if you do any experiments! I use mine in bread dough. I understand that yeast actually likes a slightly acidic environment, and I can’t taste it in the final product.
Randy Greenwald
Elsa – Just revisited this post and saw that you asked for the results of any experiments. We have found the whey such a successful replacement for buttermilk that we now use it exclusively in the pancakes, biscuits and scones in which we use buttermilk. Since it lacks the solids of buttermilk, we need to use, uh, ‘way’ less whey, but the adjustment is not hard to make and we notice no difference in results. Free whey vs. $$ buttermilk is a contest that buttermilk will lose every time!