Homemade matsoni
Wholesome, thick, and silky — made from cow's milk! Matsoni is a lot like natural homemade yogurt, but with no special starter cultures or kitchen gadgets. Minimal ingredients, maximum natural flavor. If there's no real difference, why overpay for store-bought yogurt?
Cooking method
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Step 1:
How do you make matsoni? Use thick, high-fat sour cream, ideally from a farm, and be sure it's fresh. If your sour cream is near the end of its shelf life, the matsoni may simply fail to thicken. Likewise, choose rich farm milk over the ultra-pasteurized kind in a carton. Bring farm milk to a boil first and cool it to room temperature to kill off any harmful bacteria.
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Step 2:
Pour the milk into a saucepan and warm it over low heat to about 105°F (40°C) — dip a clean finger in; it should feel pleasantly warm. If the milk gets too hot, the lactic-acid bacteria we need will start to die off. If it's too cool, fermentation won't kick in and the matsoni won't set.
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Step 3:
Pour the warm milk into a clean glass jar.
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Step 4:
In a small bowl, stir 2-3 tablespoons of the warm milk into the sour cream. That's our matsoni starter. If I'm not mistaken, Armenians call this kind of starter "matsun."
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Step 5:
Pour the starter into the jar and stir thoroughly. Cap the jar with a lid.
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Step 6:
Turn the jar upside down and wrap it in a thick blanket so it cools slowly. In the photo I have a thin towel, but I also bundled the jar in a wool blanket on top. This matters — the bacteria need time and warmth to do their work. Leave the matsoni like this overnight, then chill it in the fridge for an hour before serving.
- These days you can buy dedicated matsoni starter cultures. But in the old days Georgian cooks had no starters, thermometers, or yogurt makers — they did it pretty much the way this recipe describes.
- Matsoni comes out with a slightly jelly-like consistency, but how thick it gets depends heavily on the sour cream. The fresher it is, the more lactic-acid bacteria it has, and the thicker the matsoni.
- I served the matsoni with fresh fruit and berries as an afternoon snack.
- It tastes like Greek yogurt, only more delicate, without such a sharp tang. Remember the old commercial line, "It ferments right in the jar"? Very much like that.
- Enjoy!
- You can swap the sour cream for plain unsweetened yogurt.
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Whole cow's milk - 68 kcal/100g
- Milk 3.5% fat content - 64 kcal/100g
- Milk 3.2% fat content - 60 kcal/100g
- Milk 1.5% fat content - 47 kcal/100g
- Concentrated milk 7.5% fat content - 140 kcal/100g
- Milk 2.5% fat content - 54 kcal/100g
- Sour cream 30% fat - 340 kcal/100g
- Sour cream 25% fat - 284 kcal/100g
- Sour cream 20% fat - 210 kcal/100g
- Sour cream 10% fat - 115 kcal/100g
- Sour cream - 210 kcal/100g
