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A comment on Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe.

Re:Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe by kwhitefoot on Saturday September 23, 2017 @10:47AM (#15319972)
It's not only Hungary that has yoghurt with flour in it, there are several brands in the US that bulk the product up with corn starch with the inevitable and negative effect on the taste and texture. When flying SAS from Norway/Denmark to Newark I will eat yoghurt on the way to the US but not on the way back because then they have been supplied with the US version. It's not that there is no good yoghurt in the US of course it's just that it seems to be allowed to put stuff in it that doesn't belong so some manufacturers do.
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Re:Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe by scythe on Saturday September 23, 2017 @11:25AM (#15320137)
Most yogurt in the US -- all the major brands except Dannon (IIRC) -- are full of pectin, which makes the yogurt thicker. This is not too bad for eating (but I avoid it) but it messes up the cooking characteristics of yogurt as an ingredient in dishes like tave kosi and sauces. Some versions of Greek yogurt don't have pectin (Chobani) but that doesn't help me
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Re:Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe by forinti on Saturday September 23, 2017 @11:00AM (#15320025)
It's so easy to make yoghurt, I wonder why most people don't do it. Add jelly, honey, or whatever you like, and you get something that's better than even the most fancy brands.
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Re:Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe by roel_v on Saturday September 23, 2017 @11:37AM (#15320190)
It's easy to make something that looks like yogurt with some milk and yeasts, but consistently making something that is convenient and tastes as good (including texture and potential intestinal effects on people sensitive to it) is far from easy.

Try to buy 10 different yogurts (from a variety of supermarkets and specialty shops) and do a comparison on taste, texture, propensity to de-emulsify, etc. You'll find that there is a very wide range.

And try to reproduce that one great yogurt you had somewhere at home. I mean, I've done the whole comparison above (and many more than 10) in a quest to replicate the yogurt from The Yogurt Shop in Adelaide's (AU) Central Market (which, from what I've been able to find, is the way it is because of a combination of two different yeast strands as well as a specific straining method they use), and I've tried many, many different ways of making yogurt - and still fail to make something like it. I mean, I won't call myself an expert because I don't even have a degree in anything biology or food production related, but I do have enough experience to say that making (good) yogurt is not 'easy' - at least not in the way that it would make sense for people to do it themselves as anything else than a novelty.

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Re:Readers on food inequality in eastern Europe by kwhitefoot on Monday September 25, 2017 @07:18AM (#15329482)
All that is true but I think the OP's point was that it is easy to make yoghurt, not that it is easy to make some specific type. And it is easy if you can get hold of a pot of live yoghurt, then all you need to add is warm milk and patience and you will have something just as good as a lot of the ordinary supermarket stuff. Of course, yes, it is a bit of a novelty because it isn't cheaper by a wide enough margin to make the effort worthwhile.
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