Question
KAREN SOO
How do I thicken my home made soy yoghurt without straining? I add ground flax and chill at the back of the fridge, helps a little.
Answer
That could help a little bit. So this really depends on what you're looking for out of your yogurt. Most people in the yogurt are looking to be able to get the active ingredients in that from the natural fermentation that's happening, so you actually get the nutritious benefits out of the live cultures that are in it. So that being said, if you want to thicken it, most techniques are going to tell you to add something like an agar agar or maybe even a tapioca flour or a corn starch. But all of those methods need you to heat up the mixture of soy milk beforehand, right? So you can do that to your soy milk and heat it up, and then mix those in to be able to thicken it up and let it cool down, and then add your cultures to be able to get the yogurt. So that will definitely help for that. You just want to make sure that you let it cool down enough that you're not going to kill off the cultures that you're putting into it when you mix it in. The other option would be to use a really high-protein soy milk. So there are a couple makers of those, and that will actually help to be able to thicken it up at the same time, too, without having to heat it up. So a couple different methods. Just again, if you're going to add the agar agar or the corn starch or tapioca flour, just make sure to do that before you put the active cultures in, and then bring it down to room temperature before you add them into it again.
