The Backyard Homestead

by Carleen Madigan

  Make Your Own Cheese Press

  To make a cheese press, you’ll need scrap wood, a wooden broomstick, bricks, and a 2-pound coffee can. Take a 36-inch piece of ¾-inch plywood or a 36- by 12-inch board and cut the wood to make two pieces about 11½ by 18 inches each. Drill a hole about 1 inch in diameter in the center of one of the boards. Whey will drain through this hole.

  Drill two holes in the other board, each 1 inch in diameter, 2 inches from each end of the board. The holes should be just big enough so the broomstick moves through them easily.

  Cut the broomstick into three lengths: two pieces 18 inches long and one piece 15 inches long. Nail each 18-inch piece 2 inches from the ends of the bottom board, matching the holes in the top board. Nail the other length to the center of the top board and nail round cheese follower (a circle of ½-inch plywood cut to a diameter slightly smaller than that of the coffee can) to the broomstick at the other end. Nail two blocks of wood to the bottom or set the press on two bricks or blocks so you can slide a container under the drainage hole to catch the whey.

  Making Yogurt

  The process for making yogurt is essentially the same as for making cheese starter. The milk is warmed to 100 to 110°F (38 to 43°C), the culture is added, and the mixture is kept at the desired temperature for several hours. At about 100°F (38°C), you can make yogurt in 5 to 6 hours, but you can leave it 10 to 12 hours if you like a tarter flavor.

  It is important to keep the mixture at the proper temperature for the necessary length of time to let the culture develop. If you have a yogurt maker, simply follow the manufacturer’s directions. If you don’t, use one of the ingenious methods described below.

  Basic Yogurt Recipe

  Homemade yogurt has a delicate, creamy body that is hard to find in the multitude of supermarket concoctions, full of additives and flavorings. Making it at home is a simple matter of adding culture to milk and keeping it warm for several hours.

  1 quart whole milk

  1/3 cup instant nonfat dry milk (optional; it produces a thicker texture and increases the protein content by 2 grams per cup)

  3 rounded tablespoons plain yogurt or recommended quantity of powdered culture, also called a starter

  Making Yogurt without a Yogurt Maker

  With a thermos. Almost fill a thermos bottle (preferably widemouthed) with milk heated to 100°F (38°C). Add 3 tablespoons of plain yogurt and mix thoroughly. Put on the lid and wrap the thermos in two or three terry towels. Set it in a warm, draft-free place overnight.

  In an oven. Pour 1 quart of milk into a casserole dish and add 3 tablespoons of plain yogurt. Stir well and cover the casserole. Place in a warm (100°F [38°C]) oven with the heat off. Let it sit overnight.

  On a heating pad. Mix 1 quart of milk and 3 tablespoons of plain yogurt. Set an electric heating pad at medium temperature and place it in the bottom of a cardboard box with a lid. (A large shoebox works well.) Fill small plastic containers with the milk-yogurt mixture; put on the lids. Wrap a heating pad around the containers and then cover them with towels to fill the box. Put the cover onto the box and let it sit, undisturbed, for 5 to 6 hours.

  In the sun. Pour 1 quart of warmed milk into a glass-lidded bowl or casserole. Add 3 tablespoons plain yogurt and cover with the glass lid or a clear-glass pie pan. Place in the sun on a warm (not too hot) summer day and let it sit for 4 to 5 hours. Watch it to make sure it is not shaded as the sun moves.

  An insulated cooler is yet another way to keep yogurt mixture warm while it’s incubating.

  On the back of a woodstove. Many grandmothers made clabber by setting a bowl of freshly drawn milk on the back of the stove after supper. Make yogurt this way by adding 1 cup starter to 2 quarts milk and letting it sit, loosely covered with a dish towel, on the back of the cooling woodstove overnight.

  In a Crock-Pot. Preheat a Crock-Pot on low for about 15 minutes, until it feels very warm to the fingertips. Put covered containers of milk and yogurt into the Crock-Pot, cover it, and turn off the Crock-Pot. Let mixture sit overnight.

  Flavored Yogurt

  It’s fun to enhance yogurt with different flavorings, preserves, and sweeteners. Treat your family to nutritious flavored yogurts for snacks and dessert.

  • Scald 1 quart of milk and stir in ¼ to 1/3 cup of sugar, honey, maple syrup, chocolate syrup, malt, molasses, or artificial sweetener. If other flavors are desired, after dissolving the sugar or honey, stir in 1 tablespoon of extract, such as vanilla, lemon, almond, or peppermint, or instant coffee. Another time, try adding 1 teaspoon of ground spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, ginger, or your own special combination. Add the instant nonfat dry milk, cool the mixture to 110°F (43°C), and stir in the culture. Pour into warm containers, cover, and incubate.

  Equipment for Making Yogurt

  Not much is required for making yogurt. You can buy yogurt-making machines that will keep your yogurt at the steady warm temperature that is best for incubating, but you can easily improvise. Here are the supplies you will need:

  • Candy thermometer (or yogurt spoon thermometer supplied with yogurt makers)

  • 1½- to 2-quart saucepan

  • Measuring spoons

  • Large jug or bowl (for mixing)

  • Wire whisk

  • Various containers with lids: glass or porcelain jars; stainless-steel, enamel, or porcelain bowls

  Unless your equipment is sterilized, some undesirable bacteria may be present, which can destroy your yogurt culture. To eliminate them, run your utensils through a dishwasher cycle (if they are clean, the rinse cycle is adequate) just before you begin to heat the milk. That way, the utensils are prewarmed, and you’ll know that your equipment is absolutely clean. An alternative is to immerse the utensils in a pot of boiling water for 1 minute. Various-sized canning jars with screw-on or snap-on lids make excellent yogurt containers.

  • For jam, preserve, and peanut butter flavors, put 1 tablespoon of the flavoring into the bottom of 1-cup containers and pour the warm milk-yogurt mixture over. Cover and incubate as usual.

  • If fresh, canned, or dried fruit is desired, it is best to make such additions to the yogurt after it has incubated. The acid content of some fruits can curdle the milk-yogurt mixture and prevent proper fermentation.

  • Whenever you are flavoring yogurt, always remember to leave 1 cup plain, so that you will have fresh starter for the next batch.

  What Went Wrong?

  Making Butter

  Butter can be made from sweet or sour cream. Sweet-cream butter is sometimes preferred for its mellow, bland flavor. Sour-cream butter has a richer taste. Sweet-cream butter takes longer to churn than sour-cream butter, especially if the cream is very fresh. Both sweet and sour cream churn more quickly if they have been aged two to three days in the refrigerator.

  Sweet-Cream Butter

  If you make butter weekly from cream accumulated during the week, it will give the cream time to ripen a little, which improves the taste and makes it easier to whip. Or leave the cream a day or so at room temperature, until it begins to clabber. One quart of well-separated heavy cream makes about 1 pound of butter and ½ quart of buttermilk.

  1. Pour the cold, heavy cream into a chilled mixing bowl. Turn the mixer slowly up to high speed and let the cream go through the stages of whipped cream, stiff whipped cream, and finally, two separate products — butter and buttermilk. As the butter begins to separate from the buttermilk, turn the speed to low.

  To make butter in a food processor, chill the processor bowl and metal blade in the freezer for 15 minutes. Process, scraping down the sides of the bowl at least once, until the solids separate from the liquids.

  2. When the separation has taken place, pour off the buttermilk and save it for making biscuits or pancakes.

  3. Knead the soft butter with a wet wooden spoon or a rubber scraper to force out the milk, pouring off the milk as you knead. When it seems that all of the milk is out, refill the bowl with ice water and continue kneading
to wash out any remaining milk. Any milk left in with the butter will cause the butter to spoil. Pour off the water again and repeat the process until the water is clear.

  4. You now have sweet butter. If you want it salted, mix in a teaspoon of flake salt. If you want it bright yellow instead of white, add butter coloring.

  Sour-Cream Butter

  Sour-cream butter was probably invented by lucky accident when lack of refrigeration made it difficult to keep milk fresh. Souring the cream first yields a butter that churns more rapidly and has a distinctive, rich flavor.

  Butter in a Jar

  This very simple way to make butter at home uses just a canning jar and a marble. Pour 1 pint of well-chilled heavy cream into a clean quart-sized or larger canning jar. Add a glass marble and close the jar. Shake the jar vigorously until the cream begins to thicken, then more gently until suddenly you have a lump of butter in the jar. (The shaking process will take 30 to 40 minutes; you can do it while you listen to music, or pass the jar around while you chat with friends!) Reserve the buttermilk for another purpose. Rinse the butter, kneading gently with a rubber spatula, in several changes of cold water. Knead in a pinch of salt, if you like.

  1. Ripen cream by adding ¼ cup of starter (see page 310) to each quart of heavy cream. Let it sit at room temperature for 24 hours, stirring occasionally. Chill the ripened cream for 2 to 3 hours before churning.

  2. Pour the cream into a wooden barrel or glass-jar churn. If desired, add butter coloring at this point. Keep the cream and the churn cool and turn the mechanism with a moderately fast, uniform motion. About 30 minutes of churning will usually produce butter, but the age of the cream, the temperature, and whether the cream is from a morning or night milking will affect the length of time required.

  3. When the butter forms grainy lumps, draw off the buttermilk and add very cold water. Churn slowly for 1 minute, then draw off the water.

  4. Move the butter to a wooden bowl and sprinkle it with 2 tablespoons of flake salt for each pound of butter. Let it stand for a few minutes and then press it with a wooden paddle to work out any remaining buttermilk or water and to mix in the salt. Taste. If the butter is too salty, wash with cold water. If it’s not salty enough, add a bit more salt. Keep the butter cold while you’re working.

  Making Ice Cream at Home

  Homemade ice cream first became a staple of country living in 1846, when a woman named Nancy Johnson invented an ice-cream churn, complete with dasher, hand crank, two tubs, and space for ice and salt. By 1851, ice cream was produced commercially.

  With the widespread use of refrigeration, electricity, supermarkets, and convenience foods in the early twentieth century, homemade ice cream became a delicacy for special occasions because we came to accept commercially made ice creams and other frozen desserts as food.

  Over time, what was once a simple mixture of milk, sweetener, flavoring, and possibly eggs became a frozen chemical soup of more than 60 additives with almost 50 percent more air than in homemade ice cream.

  For many, making ice cream at home has a great deal of mystique. Recipe books warn that the proportion of salt and ice has to be just right for the mixture to freeze correctly. Use too much sugar and the mixture won’t freeze; too little, and it will freeze as hard as a brick. Many cooks encourage the use of perfectly good ingredients such as gelatin and flour, but somehow these seem alien to such a simple delight.

  Making ice cream and other frozen desserts yourself makes good sense and is a lot of fun. The flavors you can create are limitless, and the ingredients are readily available. Your ice cream will cost less than the premium brands and will be vastly superior to the cheaper brands. Most important, you can control what goes into your ice cream, making it as sinfully rich or as austerely slimming as you want, with no unnecessary ingredients.

  For the best smooth texture and a minimum of ice crystals, ice cream needs to be constantly agitated throughout the freezing process; this is easily achieved with a modern ice cream maker with a freezer unit or with an old-fashioned ice cream maker, ice, and rock salt. Ice cream made with this process is called “churned” ice cream, because the dasher in the machine constantly churns the mixture to aerate it and scrapes the freezer container’s sides, breaking up any ice clusters that have formed.

  How to Make Fresh-Churned Ice Cream

  Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s directions for your particular equipment.

  The Scoop on Scooping

  Our favorite kind of scoop is the solid aluminum, rounded type without a lever. Running the scoop along in smooth, long lines helps get perfect scoops. Don’t wet the scoop: The water will freeze to a thin layer of ice and add ice crystals to your otherwise perfectly textured ice cream.

  1. Prepare ice cream, pour into a bowl, cover, and refrigerate for several hours.

  2. Wash the dasher, lid, and can of the ice-cream churn, then rinse and dry. Refrigerate to chill.

  3. Pour the chilled mixture into the chilled can, making sure it is no more than two-thirds full to allow for expansion. Put on the lid.

  4. Put the can into the freezer tub and attach the crank-and-gear assembly.

  5. Fill the tub one-third full of ice. Sprinkle an even layer of salt, about 1/8 inch deep, on the top. Continue adding layers of ice and salt until the tub is filled to the top of the can.

  6. If using ice cubes, add 1 cup of cold water to the ice and salt mixture to help the ice melt and settle. If using crushed ice, let the ice-packed tub sit for 5 minutes before beginning to churn. While churning, add more ice and salt in the same proportions, so the ice remains up to the top of the can.

  7. For hand-cranked churns, crank slowly at first — slightly less than one revolution per second. When the mixture begins to pull, churn as quickly and steadily as possible for 5 minutes. Churn at a slightly slower pace for a few minutes longer, or until the mixture is reasonably hard.

  8. For electrically powered churns, fill the can with the mix and plug in the unit. Allow it to churn until it stops (15 to 20 minutes). To restart if necessary, turn the can with your hands.

  9. When the ice cream is ready, remove the crank-and-gear assembly. Wipe all ice and salt from the top, so that none can fall into the cream when you uncover it. Remove the lid and lift out the beater. The ice cream should be the texture of mush.

  Ice Cream Ingredients

  • Dairy products. Heavy cream, light cream, half-and-half, whole milk, low-fat milk, buttermilk, evaporated milk, sour cream

  • Sweeteners. Granulated white sugar, brown sugar, honey, unsulfured molasses, maple syrup, light corn syrup, dark corn syrup, fructose, maltose, sorghum

  • Flavorings. Vanilla extract, chocolate, carob, fruits, nuts, coffee, liqueurs

  10. Scrape the cream from the beater. Add chopped nuts and fruit or sauce for ripple, if desired. Pack down the cream with a spoon. Cover with several layers of wax paper and replace the lid, putting a cork in the cover hole.

  11. Eat the ice cream in its soft state, or ripen and harden the ice cream by placing it in a deep freezer or refrigerator freezer, or repack it in the tub with layers of ice and salt until the can and lid are covered. Use more salt than you previously used, making each layer about ¼ inch deep. Cover the freezer tub with a blanket and set it in a cool place until ready to serve, about 1 hour.

  Basic Vanilla Ice Cream

  There’s nothing like rich, high-butterfat ice cream, but in this basic recipe, there’s an option of making the ice cream lower in calories.

  1 quart heavy or light cream or half-and-half or 2 cups each heavy and light cream

  1 cup sugar or ½ cup honey

  1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

  1. Scald the cream. Although the ingredients can be mixed and used as is, scalding concentrates the milk solids and improves the flavor. To scald, slowly heat cream in a saucepan until just below the boiling point. Small bubbles will begin to appear around the edges. Stir for several minutes, then remove from the heat.

&n
bsp; 2. Stir in the sugar. Pour into a bowl, cover, and chill. When completely cooled, add the vanilla.

  3. When the mixture is thoroughly chilled, follow directions for churned ice cream.

  Yield: 1 quart

  Butterfat Content

  Whipping or heavy cream has 36 percent butterfat and produces the richest ice cream, but with the most calories. Most kinds available in grocery stores are ultrapasteurized and contain emulsifiers and stabilizers.

  Light or coffee cream contains 20 percent butterfat and makes relatively rich ice cream.

  Half-and-half is a mixture of milk and cream with 12 percent butterfat; it makes a satisfactory ice cream with a hint of richness.

  Whole milk has 3½ percent butterfat. It’s the basic ingredient in most ice creams and sherbets.

  Low-fat milks, with 2 percent butterfat, 99 percent fat-free, and skim (less than ½ percent butterfat), are useful when you want to limit calories, but you will get a coarser texture in the ice cream.

  Vanilla Variations

  Once you’ve mastered basic vanilla ice cream, the variations are limited only by your ingredients. Here’s a sampling:

  Banana ice cream. Use the basic recipe, but add 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1½ cups mashed banana to the cream mixture just before freezing.

  Butter pecan ice cream. Use the basic recipe, but add to the mushy ice cream 2/3 cup chopped pecans that have been sautéed in 3 tablespoons butter until lightly browned.

  Chocolate chip ice cream. Use the basic recipe, but add 1 cup finely chopped chocolate chips to the cream mixture just before freezing.