Community Yogurt (and other forms of collective resilience)

How might small traditions shared over time collectively build community resilience for rural towns and those of us who occupy them?

Yesterday, I made the best gahtdamn yogurt I’ve ever made.
Wait - not just the best yogurt that I’ve ever made…the best yogurt I’ve ever tasted.
Like, screw ice cream. Seriously.
I think this yogurt is so good that it could be a multigenerational cornerstone of community resilience that outlives me.

Look: this could be us. It’s all in the yogurt (and other shared, resilient food systems).

Wait…what? (That’s what you’re thinking right now…right? 😂)

Let me explain: I truly believe that resilient, diverse community food systems that bring people together over growing, harvesting, making, & sharing food have the capacity to change lives, generationally weed out fascism, reduce violent & petty crime, and change our essential understanding of what a community is (and can be).
In short, I’m pretty sure that resilient, diverse community food systems have the capacity to change the world…and heirloom yogurt harnesses a kindred power of diversity and resilience.

I owe this toothsome revelation to three things:

1. Learning that not all yogurt starters are “heirloom” starters;

2. realizing that heirloom yogurt starters can be shared like sourdough starter (i.e., basically infinitely…so, for my next homesteading project…😉); and

3. learning that combining two different heirloom yogurt cultures can - if you’re lucky - give you the best qualities of both.

If you’ve heard of the Puratos Center for Bread Flavor (i.e., the Sourdough Library) in St. Vith, Belgium, then you know something of the global fervor for sharing and keeping sourdough starters. Or maybe you’ve heard of the Bodie starter, which is over 200 years old and dates back to a San Francisco bakery that’s been baking loaves since the Gold Rush. SO cool. And every sourdough starter is somewhat bespoke to the environment in which it was created, so no two sourdoughs from different places taste exactly alike. How magical, right?!

(Not) an actual photograph of the origins of the Bodie starter. But hey, solid gold on both sides here, amirite?

So, imagine my delight when I learned that some yogurt cultures are likewise heirloom-quality starters that can be shared out amongst your family and friends for a looooong time. Apparently “direct-set” yogurt starter cultures (like Yogourmet) are single-use cultures; one packet = one batch of yogurt. Heirloom yogurt starter cultures, though, are reusable indefinitely (if you care for them properly). Part of that proper care is that you must re-culture them least every 7 days. Their power comes from resilient, diverse communities of bacteria rather than just one or two strains of bacteria as seen in most store-bought yogurt. Apparently if some external contaminant or weakening force wants to undermine your direct-set yogurt bacteria, there’s a super good chance it’ll succeed. But the multifaceted nature of heirloom yogurt bacteria sees an external bad actor and is like, “Nah, dawg. Try somewhere else. This ain’t gonna be worth the fight for you.” And so, they carry on…and on..and on.

For years, I’ve been making my own yogurt and using some of the previous batch to start the new one…but with varying levels of success that inevitably petered out after two to three batches. And the yogurt was fiiiine - it was yogurt - but there was certainly nothing remarkable about it aside from the cost savings over purchasing store-bought.

But NOW - wowza. This is one of those very, very rare times that rabbit-hole-ing in Pinterest really paid off. I stumbled on a largely unremarkable article about homemade yogurt; you know the type: 95% life story, 5% recipe, UGH. BUT, nested in the article was a mention about “heirloom” yogurt cultures and the author’s favorite place to get starter cultures. Thirty good minutes of rabbit-hole-ing later (thank you, r/YogurtMaking subReddit) I decided to finally click over to Cultures For Health and select a starter for myself.

I intended to get just a Greek yogurt heirloom culture and call it a day…but there was something about the name “Matsoni” that reactivated a vague memory. Then it hit me: it was the name of a yogurt that I had at a café one morning in Kefalonia, Greece…and then returned to eat it almost every day for two solid weeks. It had a slight smell of honeysuckle but with a more real-honey taste on the tongue, albeit very light. At the time, I thought “Matsoni” was just the name of a specific prepared dish, like “spaghetti alla carbonara” instead of just “spaghetti”. Little did I know that Matsoni is a WHOLE THING. It’s first documented appearance was in an 11th century Medieval Armenian manuscript. It has incredible health benefits. It’s delicious.

Could the first batches of Matsoni yogurt have been eaten by some Medieval Armenian royalty…and some of those cultures are still alive and incubating new batches today? Who knows…but it’s incredible to think that it might be possible.

I recall that the only thing I didn’t love about it was that the consistency was thinner than I was expecting for a yogurt in Greece…because I was expecting “Greek yogurt”, the stuff that makes sour cream look like kefir. So I thought to myself, “Maybe if I mix Matsoni culture with Greek yogurt culture, and they’re both heirloom cultures…I’ll get all the good qualities and none of the bad?”

And folks, that’s exactly how it worked out. I mixed one packet of the heirloom Greek yogurt starter with one packet of the Matsoni starter and used my standard yogurt recipe¹ to work the magic. 16 hours later, I opened the pot, ladled off three starters into sterilized jars, and set the rest to straining in my Greek yogurt strainer. The next morning, the yogurt had set up so thickly that I had to add 2 oz. of whey back into it to get my preferred consistency (much thicker than Chobani, *slightly* thinner than Fage).

The first taste was divine: an ever-so-slight honeysuckle aroma, a wonderfully tart profile, and just a bit of amber honey flavor (without the actual sweetness) on the palate. Now, of course, since I’m a Vermonter, I had to add just a *touch* of maple syrup…and since I’m high-maintenance, I had to add just a *bit* of vanilla extract. Even before these minor improvements, this yogurt was the best I’d ever had…but with the addition of a tablespoon each of maple syrup and vanilla, this heirloom yogurt took its place in the Hall of Fame (as judged by my own tongue, at least). I’ll never be able to buy yogurt from the store again. It just won’t do. Besides, with the price of a 1/2 gallon of milk hovering around $3.50 and a quart of yogurt going for around $7, it never hurts to cut your costs in half.

The first 5 minutes of straining off whey. This would go on to reduce by about 1/3, with a half gallon of 2% milk yielding exactly a quart of yogurt (the standard size of larger grocery store yogurt containers).

Now, you may be asking, “Jack, this is great and all…but what does it have to do with collective resilience?” Excellent question.

When we embrace and share diverse cultures (human, bacterial, fungal, mycorrhizal) in the form of community foodways, we’re not just improving the resilience of our food systems - we’re improving the resilience of our community as a whole. A beloved sourdough or yogurt starter is more likely to live for generations in the hands of a hundred people than in the hands of one. And when we meet neighbors for the first time to share these gifts - neighbors that we perhaps wouldn’t have met otherwise - we strengthen the quality, care, and resilience of our local communities.

This is especially true when preparing and eating food with folks who may not have the same paradigm as you. Picture a hunter who processes deer alone in his barn; he may harbor resentment - or at least misunderstanding - toward some of his neighbors who don’t look, act, or think like him, simply by mote of not actually knowing them and having no occasion to do so. But if that hunter had access to, say, a community foodways hub that included a processing station, sausage-making equipment, etc…and that hub hosted monthly dinners using food grown/hunted/raised/prepared by that hub’s users…well, that gentleman hunter is much more likely to spend time with neighbors that he may have once misunderstood. Even something simpler but equally regular and social - like a weekly foodshare gathering - can have a similar impact. The effect of sharing self-made food and food-making is humanizing and de-monolithizing…and its value cannot be overstated. And don’t even get me started on how making healthy, local food more affordable via DIY can change lives!

Coming together over preparing, cooking, and eating is a powerful community tool. When we grow together, make together, and eat together, we stay together.

Alright, friends - if you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them in the comments (and over coffee or beer, if you’re local to me). Your insights will be especially relevant to me since I’m working on some potential legislation related to community foodways and anti-extremism here in Vermont. (More on that later.)

And if you’re in the Northeast Kingdom (VT), I have two heirloom Matsoni/Greek yogurt starters to share. All I ask is that from your first batch, you part out three starters: one for yourself and two to share…and that you ask your giftees to do the same. Send me a message if you’d like one!

Maybe we should start some kind of yogurt family tree document? Could be fun, and such a nifty community history project. Heck, let’s do it for a sourdough starter too (which I ask for with full selfishness).

Let’s get this multigenerational cornerstone of community resilience party started, friends. Yogurt is only the beginning.

1. Warm a full or half gallon of milk (2% or whole) to between 180°F and 212°F. Then dunk the warming container into an icewater bath until it comes down to 110°. Ladle off a cup of the milk and whisk in your yogurt starter. Pour that mixture back into the container with the rest of the milk. Hold the yogurt between 110°F and 115°F for between four and 16 hours, depending on your consistency and flavor preferences. (Shorter incubation = thinner and more mild; longer incubation = thicker and tangier.) I use an Instant Pot with a “yogurt” setting for this but many heirloom cultures can be incubated at room temperature (68°F to 78°F)…which I can only pull off in the summer and fall in our quirky, drafty old house.