Chasing a unicorn... (or trying to make ricotta from yogurt whey)

(Brian) #1

I’m hoping some of you here make your own Greek yogurt and have been down this road. It’s bugging me.

I’ve been making my own Greek yogurt for some time now. I have a good source of a pretty good quality milk from a local dairy and have been using an Instant Pot knockoff for quite a while now. It’s really good. Good protein source without a large amount of carbs. Normally, a gallon of milk will yeild about 2 quarts of yogurt and 2 quarts of whey, about, I haven’t measured accurately.

But, being the frugal type that I am, dumping off that whey bugs me big time. I hate wasting food and that’s what it feels like.

So today, I got online and looked for how to make ricotta cheese from yogurt whey. I did find a recipe that said that it’s optional to add milk and then they gave instructions. I did not add milk. I used the whey. Actually, I don’t have any more milk, it all went into the yogurt.

I followed the instructions faithfully, heated the whey to 195 degrees (F), removed from heat, stirred in the prescribed amount of vinegar, and let it sit for a few minutes. And then a few more minutes. And then a few more minutes. I even added a second dose of vinegar, just in case. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero curds. So I figured maybe there really was something in there and carefully strained. Zilch. Zip. Nada. No curds. None.

So I got to looking at recipes and comparing. It seems like putting the whey in there is something that people do to make them feel like they’re actually using it. Recipes that use only milk and no whey at all seem to have just as much output of ricotta per amount of milk as the recipes that use the whey, sometimes more. So that gives me the impression that the whey isn’t bringing anything to the party at all and will just get dumped down the drain anyway.

Am I wrong about that? I had a lady at the farmers market a few days ago telling me she adds rennet to her whey to get ricotta. I’m skeptical. She didn’t say whether she’s adding more milk.

Anyway, this is one of those things that Mr. Google is more frustrating than helpful with. Have any of you been down this road before? Maybe you know from experience whether trying to get ricotta from just yogurt whey is just chasing a unicorn or whether there really is a way to extract a bit more out of that before dumping it.

Whatcha think? Been there done that? Please tell me about it! Thanks!

(Full Metal KETO AF) #2

I don’t see how it’s possible to make cheese (curds) with all the solids removed and nothing left to form those curds. Unicorn indeed! :unicorn: :joy::joy::joy::cowboy_hat_face:

(Brian) #3

Thanks, David!! I really appreciate it! I wondered from the very beginning, but went ahead and tried because someone said it worked. Me thinks someone didn’t know their butt from their elbow and were just keeping a fairy tale going. :wink:

It still bugs me throwing that much whey away. But I know it’s loaded in carbs, which I don’t need. Not sure what other keto uses there would be for it. If’n ya have suggestions in that regard, I’m glad to hear. All we have for animals is cats and it gave them diarrhea. :slight_smile:

(Full Metal KETO AF) #4

Interesting Brian, I just read a little and whey is used in ricotta cheese but it seemed to be as a replacement for adding an acid mostly to form curds in new milk which it said produced even more whey. However it said whey less than 20 hours old. So basically it saves you the expense and added flavor using lemon adds. I did see a thing about it being fantastic for plants, in particular tomatoes. If I remember right you’re a backyard farmer. Most stuff I found on it involved ways to use it up in food. Personally as a guy who spent my life in restaurant work I hate throwing out stuff too. I try to use all I can of the food materials I buy for cooking. But with KETO you may be best just writing off the whey if you don’t know anyone who’d use it.

(Brian) #5

Thanks, David! That does make sense, with the whey being acidic. It would bring that to the party, and maybe a bit of flavor. So I can appreciate that.

Yes, I am a farmer wannabe / backyard farmer. :slight_smile: I could maybe use a little of the whey but have seen warnings about overdoing it. Stuff like altering pH and it being hard on some things, I dunno if I wanna get to crazy with that.

But anyway, thanks very much for the discussion! I’ll no doubt continue to enjoy my Greek yogurt. Mostly, the whey will just go… away. :wink: Sorry, couldn’t resist. :smiley:

(Anne Brodie) #6

So interesting because I have recently made homemade clotted cream and have the same issue with not wasting the leftover liquid. It is sitting in the fridge and I was planning to add it in a recipe today. However, when I read YOU talking about it, I found myself saying “Don’t eat that carby liquid! You work so hard to avoid carbs and then drink what is a byproduct of you making great low carb goods.” Well, shoot… I don’t need to tell you but myself. That jar is getting dumped down the sink and NOT dumped into me. I’m still getting the cream I want, homemade at less cost than purchasing. Thank you for providing the inspiration by caring about you in a way I wasn’t giving myself.

And heck… I have been considering making my own yogurt for some time but my old yogurt maker doesn’t heat right any more. Hadn’t thought of the instapot…

(Full Metal KETO AF) #7

I started making yoghurt while I was in high school. I used the pilot heat of my gas oven to incubate it. Inside your gas oven while it’s turned off it gets into the 90-100F range. I would fill the jars with scalded cooled milk that had some plain yoghurt added for culture and put them in the oven overnight, maybe 12 hours. Perfect yoghurt, I’ve never made Greek style though. :cowboy_hat_face:

(Brian) #8

To give you an idea what the Instant Pot type device does… it’s really not complicated…

It takes your milk and runs the temperature up to 180 degrees. I’m not sure how long it holds it there, not all that long I don’t think. It’s supposed to kill the “bad guys” that might be hangin’ out in there that might add some stuff or flavors to your yogurt you don’t want. Then it lets it cool to 105 degrees and beeps at you to add the starter. Once I add the starter, it requires a button be pushed to start a timer and it’ll just hold the temp at 105 for the next 9 hours (adjustable). Beep goes off and I have yogurt. From there, I put it into a big colander with a very fine mesh “bag” lining the colander. That sits nicely over a pot. The whole thing goes into the fridge overnight. The next day, most of the whey is in the pot and the Greek yogurt is waiting for me to put it into a different container. Done.

It’s not complicated. And I suspect numerous devices might help to get the job done. I’ve seen people using a crock pot on YouTube videos, and David suggests the oven with pilot light might be a good option. Honestly, I’m not sure how critical the temperatures are. Lower than 105 might work, perhaps a bit slower (?). Too much higher, I’m not sure if the culture would be damaged. You’d have to research that one. I’m sure there’s a range.

A lady at the farmers market said she uses her dehydrator. I would imagine a lot of those you can set the temperature. Last time I made it, the power went out and I couldn’t get the Instant Pot back to the place it left off in the yogurt setting. So, I put it on the sous vide setting at 105 degrees. It was fine. So that also leads me to believe that it could be done with a sous vide type device. Probably lots of options. :slight_smile:

As for starter, I’ve thought about getting a real bona fide Greek yogurt starter. They tell me you can keep those going, kinda like sourdough. I don’t know. So far, I’ve generally just gotten some plain Fage at the store and used that as starter. If I think about it and don’t eat all of the yogurt that I made, I will save a little of the homemade and use that for the starter. It works, at least for a few times. Most of the time, I’ll blend a little new with a little old. Probably doesn’t really matter but makes me feel good. LOL!!

With the Instant Pot, it can take what feels like a week for it to cool from 180 degrees. Once it’s up to temp and the display says it’s cooling, I’ll take the pot with the hot milk and put it in a sink full of ice water (not allowing ice water into the milk, just floating the pot on top of the ice water and stirring) along with a thermometer. I can cool it down in just a couple of minutes instead of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. Once it’s around 105, it just goes back into the Instant Pot and it’ll “beep” at me shortly thereafter to add the starter, when it realizes the milk is at the right temp. I’ll take a few ladles of the milk out of the pot and into a bowl along with the starter yogurt and whisk that up so it’s dissolved and the stir that into the big pot of milk. Put on lid, wait for the beep 9 hours later.

Oh, and you may already know this, but the thing that makes Greek yogurt different than just plain ol’ yogurt is draining off the whey. They may drain a little off of regular yogurt but mostly, I think it gets blended back in. Greek is supposed to be much lower in carbs, not carb free, but much lower, so that’s what we’ve been going for. It packs quite a bit of protein in there if that’s something you’re looking for.

Anyway, probably preaching to the choir on some of this, but thought just in case someone reading might wanna know, I’d share a little. Honestly, I think it took longer to type this post than what it takes to actually do the stuff I told ya. It just gets spread out over several steps. I’ll usually start it in the morning, have the cooling stuff done by late morning, get it out and strain it sometime in the mid evening, and have yogurt for breakfast the next day! :slight_smile:

Oh, in case anyone wonders, the yield is about half whey and half yogurt, about. Sometimes I do a half gallon at a time, sometimes a whole gallon. A gallon of milk gives me about 2 quarts of Greek yogurt. And that’s definitely cheaper than just buying the yogurt, probably about half for me. We have a local dairy that has exceptionally good milk (in glass jars) but they’re definitely not the cheapest milk to be had. It’s just what we like. Probably around half the price, give or take a little.