Viili, piimä, filmjölk, skyr – all obscure mouthfuls of rolling foreign vowels – that mean but one thing: cultured milk. The Scandinavians, whose ill-tempered northern climate necessitates creative application of food preservation techniques, celebrate soured milks and cultured dairy foods in a manner unparalleled by even the yogurt-loving people of the Caucasus. Indeed, they thrive on all manner of cultured and soured milks which are deeply ingrained into their culinary tradition and heritage, and from their undying love for wholesome, naturally soured milks we can all learn a lesson.
Scandinavia, though offering a remarkable plethora of cold-weathered vegetables, berries and other nourishing, suffers from severe, cold and dark winters characteristic of the north. No other word but harsh seems to better describe the challenges of a Scandinavian winter. Indeed, it ought to for the word harsh itself is of Scandinavian origin, coming to the English language from the Norwegian word harsk.
The peoples of Scandinavia are masters of food preservation – techniques won through difficult and hard winters in which many bellies went hungry. From necessity and practicality, a heritage of cultured, naturally fermented foods was born. They bring us gravlax, pickled herring, cheeses and sourdough breads, inlagda rödbetor (a type of pickled beet) and, of course, a wide variety of yogurts such as viili, piimä, filmjölk and skyr.
A 2008 study of over 82,000 Swedish men and women found that a high intake of cultured milk products seemed to lower the risk of developing bladder cancer.
Their love of cultured dairy foods is only fitting; after all, Sweden and Finland lead the world in milk consumption averaging three to four gallons of milk drunk for every man, woman and child in the country each month1. It’s only natural that such a milk-loving society would find unique and alternative ways to not only preserve, but also enjoy dairy beyond cold, frothy glasses of fresh milk. Their time-honored love of fresh milk, cheeses and cultured dairy foods has undoubtedly benefited their health. Indeed, the mere act of adding a starter culture to milk in effort to produce a yogurt not only increases the amount of beneficial bacteria present in the milk, but also doing so increases the food’s micronutrient profile – improving, in particular, the amount of B vitamins. A 2008 study of over 82,000 Swedish men and women found that a high intake of cultured milk products seemed to lower the risk of developing bladder cancer2. Moreover, a high intake of cultured foods is linked to an increased barrier against microbial infection3.
Viili
Viili, though thought to originate in Sweden, is a Finnish cultured dairy food noted for its viscous, gelatinous and almost ropey consistency. Indeed, the longer the strands produced, the more treasured the viili; indeed, some ropes of viili have been reported to reach upwards of one foot in length. Viili’s characteristic texture is the result of naturally present, beneficial yeasts and lactic-acid producing bacteria. Its is mildly sour, and in many respects faintly sweet by comparison to other cultured dairy foods and yogurt, making it a good option for small children. Want to try it? You can pick up viili starters online.
Piimä
Where viili is eaten piimä is drunk. A thin fermented beverage, piimä is less sweet than viili and faintly cheese-like in its flavor. Due to its characteristically thin consistency and its sour almost cheese-like flavor it’s a good substitute for buttermilk. When piimä starter is used to culture cream, it produces a slightly thicker version that makes for a beautiful sauce. We serve it with pan-fried brussels sprouts. As with villi, if you want to try making piima, you can find starter cultures online.
Filmjölk
Filmjölk is another treasured cultured dairy food. Its bright and tangy flavor is quite versatile. Filmjölk is not as thin as piimä, and neither as thick as viili. For this reason it’s well-suited to a variety of applications. Filmjölk earns its tangy taste from lactococcus lactis and leuconostoc mesenteroides. These bacteria, like others involved in fermentation, render the milk slightly acid and that its acidic environment coagulates the milk’s natural proteins turning the milk into sour, thick yogurt. You can pick up filmjölk starters online.
Skyr
Skyr is Icelandic in origin, and traditionally consumed at breakfast. Though technically a soft cheese due to the inclusion of rennet, skyr is cultured with a starter that includes such beneficial bacterial strains as streptococcus thermophilus and lactobacillus bulgaricus. The whey of traditional skyr is quite sour and somewhat bitter and it is sometimes used as a substitute for vinegar. Starters for skyr aren’t widely available, even online; however, if you’re lucky enough to find skyr at your health food store you can use the unflavored variety as a starter . Mix it with warm milk, add a few drops rennet (which you can find online). The skyr should coagulate or curdle within about five hours. After which you cut the curds and strain them through a cheesecloth or butter muslin (you can find these in most health food stores or online) for twelve to twenty-four hours depending on your preferred thickness.
Tette Milk
Even more obscure is Norway’s tette milk, long heralded as a beauty treatment when drunk, which is produced by steeping the leaves of a blue-flowered Scandinavian meadow plant in freshly drawn milk. The milk would then sit at room temperature until clabbered, and this herbaceous clabbered milk could then be used to culture more milk. Milk drawn in the spring, and thus preserved, could be consumed well into winter provided it wasn’t disturbed by stirring which would break the curds and whey. Unless you live with access to the tette plant, you’ll be unable to make traditional tette milk; however, it’s lovely to consider, isn’t it?
Why Scandinavian-style Room Temperature Yogurts Are a Great Choice
Aside from the fact that cultured dairy products are simply wonderful for you (and taste wonderful, too). I recommend room-temperature yogurts for people with limited time. That is, if you’re one of the countless readers that emails me wondering how to fit traditional foods and from-scratch cooking into a life that also includes a 60+ hour work week, charitable commitments and raising kids, this is the kind of yogurt you want to make. Most traditional yogurts (Bulgarian and Greek) are thermophilic. That is, they culture best at temperatures between 108 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit. That means, you’re usually using a yogurt maker or otherwise carefully monitoring temperature. Viili, piimä and filmjölk culture best at room temperature. To prepare them takes less than five minutes of your time and you don’t need any special equipment for temperature regulation. Mix milk with starter, set it on your counter and in a day or two you will have a beautiful, traditional homemade yogurt. Easy easy.
How to Culture Scandinavian-style Yogurts at Home
You’ll note that these Scandinavian cultured dairy foods are largely produced by adding a starter culture to fresh milk and then allowing the milk to naturally ferment – or clabber – at room temperature which is in slight contrast to the traditional yogurt to which many of us our better accustomed. Room temperature, or mesophilic, yogurts are easy to prepare at home.
- Simply combine two tablespoons of starter culture (see sources) with up to one quart fresh milk and allow it to culture at room temperature for up to three days (depending on variety and preference), or until the yogurt solidifies and separates easily from the side of the glass jar when tilted to one side.
- Reserve two tablespoons starter culture for a future batch and enjoy.
- NOTE TO RAW MILK USERS: If you’re using raw milk to culture these yogurts, the naturally occurring beneficial bacteria in your raw milk will, over time, overtake the bacteria in your starter culture. As a result, you’ll no longer be making viili or piima; rather, you’ll be making bonny clabber (which is also lovely). To avoid this and maintain a pure culture, prepare a yogurt from milk that has been scalded and cooled (one tablespoon starter to one pint milk). Then prepare a raw milk yogurt according to the directions above, reserving only the starter from your boiled milk to culture future batches. This practice, maintaining a pure seed starter, ensures that the bacteria in your yogurt are not overtaken by wild bacteria in your milk.
Where to Find Starters
If I’ve got you all excited and you’re ready to start culturing your way through quarts of milk, you can find traditional mesophilic (that is: room-temperature) Scandinavian-style yogurt starters online (see sources). I have not found them available any other place (aside from skyr). With good care and regular culturing, your starter will last indefinitely.
This post was originally published in March of 2010 and revised on January 2, 2012.
1. Milk history, consumption, production and composition. University of Guelph. Accessed 11 March 2010. 2. Cultured milk, yogurt and dairy intake in relation to bladder cancer risk in a prospective study of Swedish men and women. Larsson et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. October 2008. 3. Probiotics and their fermented food products are beneficial for health. Parvez et al. Journal of Applied Microbiology. 2006. June.
I’ve never heard of traditional skyr being bitter or used as a substitute for vinegar. I am curious about that. Mysa, or whey, was used to pickle just about everything in Iceland, and they just finished the month of Thorri, where there is a festival called Thorrablot that celebrates the old sour whey-pickled food (probably because in the old days, that was about all you had to eat this time of year).
Does Cultures For Health offer a skyr culture or recipe? There are a few kinds of commercial skyr that you can get, so you could probably culture from that, but I have successfully made skyr with buttermilk culture. There is a great article and recipe here:
http://icecook.blogspot.com/2006/02/skyr-recipe-and-instructions.html
She also has some other great recipes for traditional Icelandic foods, pickled and not.
I love this blog!!
This really made me smile… my dh’s great-grandparents immigrated from Finland, I love to learn things about their culture! Also it makes me feel like I’m on track with encouraging my dh and our children to drink raw milk (my background is Swiss-German, so dairy consumption is coming through on both sides there.) I haven’t tried culturing my dairy yet though I think it’d be a hit with my girls… my 3 yo especially BEGS for sour cream “dip” for veggies or just about anything. They both love real yogurt and actually turn their noses up at “character yogurt” with artificial flavors and too much sweetness, but love plain yogurt sweetened with a bit of maple syrup and some frozen blueberries mixed in.
The more ways we have to ferment dairy the better. Raw fresh milk from the cow is delicious BUT the lactose IS sugar and it is best for all of us to reduce the amounts of sugar in the diet. Sugar is truly the scourge of civilization. Sugars are the engery source for the cancer cells in our bodies (we all have them). This provides them means to grow and spread. Health cells in our bodies can and do use Ketones from FAT as energy. Cancer cells can not utilize ketones. So theoretically if we eliminate sugar from our diets. INCLUDING all the foods that metabolizes into sugar. This includes unfermented milk, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and GRAINS. By adherring to a high fat diet that emphasizes lots of healthy fats like butter, ghee and coconut oil, grass-fed meats and organ meats, wild seafood, fermented raw dairy products, low-starch vegetables, some fruit, bone broths and cod liver oil (think hunter-gatherer) we can literally starve to death any cancer cells in our bodies while enabling healthy cells to flourish! The more ways we have to enjoy fermented milk prodcuts, the better. Thanks for the article.
Valerie,
I like your comment. You mentioned eliminating even grains – would that include wheat that has been sprouted and also fermented into sourdough?
Georgia – yes. We love our breads and pancakes, but they don’t love us.
Keep in mind, humans survived, and thrived, on a diet of fatty meats and vegetation for a very long time before grains were grown. We may have come into contact with grains, and consumed them from time to time, but they were never eaten as a staple due to their seasonal nature. There is nothing that the body needs from grain or bean carbohydrates that it cannot attain from non-starchy vegetables, seeds, and nuts. They really are completely unnecessary to the required human nutritional profile. I find it comical that those so convinced that the human digestive system is not suited to drinking milk, as evidenced by all the “lactose-intolerance” in this country, never say the same thing about beans (and grains, if to a lesser degree) which have always caused nearly every human I’ve ever known to have gas and suffer abdominal distress.
As for the gluten producing grains like wheat, current estimates in food studies suggest that 30-40% of all humans who are of European descent have gluten intolerance to some degree. I don’t know about anyone else, but that speaks to me of an over-consumption of grains in the diet.
You know, cancer cells consume nutrients the same way all of the rest of our cells do…
When we use fats as fuel, we do so because our body converts them into glucose. All of the cells in our body, whether healthy or not, use glucose as fuel, and they do not care where the glucose originated. What makes us unhealthy is overloading our pancreas (which has to produce insulin) with sugars and carbohydrates that convert quickly into sugars. This most likely increases the risk of developing diabetes, and certainly causes insulin resistance that makes us fat. It may be implicated in heart disease. I’m not sure there’s any reason to think it’s implicated in cancer.
A cancer cell is a cell that has genetic damage–it has mutated and lost 2 important things. The ‘stop button’ that tells it to cease replicating, and the telomere tails that give it a limited lifespan when it replicates. Cancer cells are ‘immortal’ in that they can replicate indefinitely, and will continue to do so because they’re missing the instructions on when to stop.
Cancer is caused by anything that can damage our genetic code–in other words, a carcinogen. Sugar certainly isn’t carcinogenic, but certain types of microorganisms are, and so are a wide variety of chemicals, radiation from sunlight and other sources, etc. Anti-oxidants help destroy free radicals that can damage our DNA. If we are lucky, our body recognizes and destroys a cancer cell when one is created. If we aren’t, then we get cancer.
High-carb and high-sugar diets are to blame for many things, but I am not sure they can be blamed for cancer!
Donna, there has been some recent evidence that suggests cell oxidation DOES occur more rapidly in a more acidic environment. Sugars surely increase the acid balance in our bodies.
My question is how to make yogurt WITHOUT the pasteurizing! THAT is one reason I want to make my own is to avoid that! I have raw milk and wanna keep it as raw and enzyme packed as possible! Thanks for any help/suggestions in advance!
Catherine, look here: http://nourishedkitchen.com/raw-milk-yogurt/
I make yogurt & kefir from raw milk. I DO NOT heat the milk above 80F, so as to not destroy the milk. Been doing this for years & neither me, my firends or dogs have ever had an adverse reaction.
Catherine – lots of yogurt recipes need that constant temp thing. I also buy raw milk and find the easiest way to get a cultured product without all the hoopla is to drop a kefir starter into the milk and let it sit for two days on my counter. It really isn’t a picky way of making a culture, and doesn’t take any babysitting. After the kefir has cultured to your liking, you can always strain it through a cheesecloth to thicken it a bit, since it’s not the consistency of yogurt when it’s in it’s natural, just-cultured state.
Thanks for all your info and time encouraging us to eat healthy. Your blog is great. I bought the viili culture from Cultures for Health and I’m getting ready to try it. I need time where I’m not using my oven and getting the temp. right for culturing it(we turn our heat down at night and during the day when we’re gone. I’ve done thermophillic before never this kind. I’m hoping we like it. I want to maintain the benefits as much as possible from the raw milk. I got raw goat’s milk instead of cow’s. Do you think that will make any difference? Thanks again for all your help. Blessings!
Which type of yogurt is depicted in your photograph? Looks like a lovely texture.
This is awesome! I used to live in Norway, and it is true, that dairy is really an art form there. In fact all of Northern Europe has a long history with dairy and cultured dairy, which is why those of 100% Northern European decent are never lactose intolerant. Fascinating! I have always wanted to try making these items at home, but last year when I looked for the cultures, they were all out of season/stock. So this is a great reminder!
Jenn – you can always get granular Kefir starter from Lifeways. It’s the Donna Gates Body Ecology Diet website. I find it to be a really reliable, consistent product. I would prefer to use real, live kefir grains, but I have had a spotty record of keeping them healthy between batches! The grains, freeze-dried, are a really good alternative, and she always has them. I will try to post a link http://bodyecology.com/kefir—starter.html. I have used this product with great success, and when I can’t find starter locally with any reliability, I can always find it here. I store them in the freezer as soon as they arrive in the mail, but I’m not sure you need to-
I grew up in Germany and we would go to Denmark on vacation and put Ymer on our granola. It was like yogurt but with a unique tart flavor. Anyone know anything about Ymer?
Ymer has it’s whey drained away but is basically what the Swedes call Filmjölk or what we have here in Norway that is called Kefir Melk/Kulturmelk.. A ‘yogurt’ thin enough to pour – but just barely!
Tanja-
Ymer looks intriguing! I’ll have to look into it some more.
- Jenny
Great article! The description of Filmjolk would definitely benefit from adding the word sweet to more precisely describe the taste. It’s nowhere near being as tangy as yoghurt. I grew up eating it on a daily basis, but now I only use it for baked goods (like scones) because I find I do better with a slightly more acidic culture, like the Mild Yoghurt they sell in the stores now.
Villi does have its counterpart here in Sweden as well, it’s called Fjallfil (the first A with two dots; ‘fjall’ is the word for mountains such as those seperating Norway and Sweden). So yes, it very well could have Swedish roots. There are to my knowledge at least two different brands of it and even small corner stores seem to sell it. Perhaps it’s popular with older people (or kids as you say), not sure, I only know I can’t stand neither the taste nor texture;). But my 4 year-old nephew loves it!
We also have the Tatte Milk you described from Norway, however it’s not sold in stores, and I’ve never met anyone who makes it still, but I found a recipe in a book I just got from the library called ‘Our Swedish Food Roots’. I think it’s so cool to use a plant for the culture base, and this summer I hope I get to try out making some.
About pure-blooded Scandinavians never being lactose-intolerant, I’m interested where you got that info. I see a lot of lactose-free products in the stores. Of course everyone drinks pasteurized milk which can cause intolerance. So perhaps it’s true. As for me, I’m lactose-intolerant, but I’m half Portuguese. Although they have a long tradition of milk consumption there as well (especially cheeses). Lactose-intolerance like gluten intolerance may arise just from poor health since those substances require a strong digestive tract.
Josefina, actually, the ability to digest lactose into adulthood is rare among mammals, and there is a specific gene that keys for it in human beings. This gene was probably selected for extensively in areas where cattle were one of the primary food sources. Those better able to digest lactose as adults probably survived better, and had more and healthier children.
So, if you cannot digest lactose, the reason is the lack of the gene that allows your body to continue creating lactase enzyme in adulthood. However, most people who are lactose intolerant find that fermented dairy products are digestable, and there are some intestinal bacteria you can consume which also produce lactase, and will enable you to consume modest amounts of dairy, in spite of your body’s inability to create lactase itself.
A little off the subject but I have a very good friend in Uppsala, Sweden, who happens to be a doctor and when she last visited me here in California was horrified that we consumed raw milk. It’s legal in our state. She begged me not to drink it. For some reason, people looking into traditional foods think that Europeans all consume better dairy and other products than we do and I’m glad to see you mention that most Swedes, probably by law, drink pasteurized milk products. I’ve sent her WAPF info on raw milk, but she insists I’m basically nuts to risk getting sick drinking it. She has told me about farms where entire families get sick on their raw milk, so what is the status on that over there? Can you get raw milk in a public grocery? Is it legal? Back to yogurt, they loved buying our American yogurt! Not sure why!
Oh goodness no, raw milk is not sold in stores here. It’s a nutritional wasteland here in all regards, sadly. I’ve myself inquired a little here and there about the possibility of obtaining raw milk from farmers and even foodies are quite reluctant to even speaking of it. If you know a little about Swedish mentality and respect for authority, you know what I’m talking about. I think it’s illegal to sell raw milk off the farm even. But I can’t find specific info about it.
However, I have been successful finding raw milk farther up north, from a lady running a ‘fäbod’. She’s all old-fashioned and wonderful, but in general, Swedes have lost their connection with traditional food culture. In fact, out of all European countries, Sweden was the first to start abandoning old foodways. It’s slowly coming back I think, but more as a novelty for the better to do folks. What brand yogurt did they buy in the US? The best yogurt I’ve ever had is French, so creamy and perfect acidity.
Btw, I’m in Sala, a few miles west of Uppsala!
I am just over from you in Norway. I think that there is more ‘Traditional Foods’ happening here. I feel there are copious amounts of fish, animal fats and cultured foods being eaten. Lots of roe/fish eggs, mayo ect. (somehow though coconut oil is not to common)
From what I understand we are allowed to purchase raw milk – but only if directly from a farmer.. never through a store. I have yet to find one willing to sell to me, though I have just got a new lead I am looking into! Though I have read that many people buy it, I think they are all just scared to share their source.
I think that if you have milk issues it might stem from the milk not being raw. I have read lots about people who think they have milk issues and that they are shocked when they try raw milk to no ill effect. I think if you try to find a source (and make sure it is clean, well fed – not grain feed cows) that you should give it a try!
Josefina, to find raw milk discussion and sources in Sweden check out http://www.alternativ.nu/ There are also places to get cultures.
Catherine,
I do not pasteurize my raw milk. I do heat it up to about 100 degrees F, then mix in my yogurt starter. Pour it into glass jars, lid tight, and keep them in a warm place for 8 to 24 hours. Hope this helps!
The part of Sweden that was lost to Russia in the war of 1808-1809 later became the nation of Finland. The word “viili” comes from the Swedish word “fil”, which is the short form of “filmjölk”, where “mjölk” is Swedish for “milk”. There are lots of Swedish words in Finnish, one category made Finnish by attaching an “i” at the end, and applying Finnish spelling standards – kaneli, mannagryni, sockeri (sokeri), aprikosi, cigaretti, kioski, påsi (pusi), kontori, etc. (may be incorrectly spelled since I don’t know Finnish spelling).
Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are essentially just dialects of one and the same language – Scandinavian – and Icelandic is essentially well-preserved Scandinavian as it was about 1,000 years ago. The names of these traditional Scandinavian ways of preserving milk often appear throughout Scandinavia – or the Nordic – but with somewhat different spellings and pronounciation. The article mentions “tette” milk in Norway. In Sweden, that would be “tetmjölk” or “tätmjölk”. The article doesn’t specifically mention Denmark, although I am quite sure that Denmark share this common Nordic cultured milk heritage, despite being the most southern.
Since I said A, I should say B: Finnish is NOT related to Scandinavian (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic). It is not an Indo-European language. (Even as far languages as Persian, Portuguese, or Bengali ARE distantly related to Scandinavian – or English for that matter.)
I found a website that sell a couple of the starters but they state:
‘We do not recommend the use of Raw Milks as they can carry a heavy bacterial load that can compete with these Dairy Cultures, alter the taste and can cause illness to the user.’
I thought raw milk should be fine and even preferable. Is this statement incorrect?
Olivia, raw milk will work just fine as long as you use fresh starter or store bought yogurt to start each batch. If you use the raw milk yogurt from your previous batch again and again, the quality will be affected. For me, by the 3rd batch that I started with raw milk yogurt from the previous batch, the consistancy was more like curds & whey and it seemed more like cheese.
Thanks for the tips. I wonder would boiling the raw milk prevent this problem, meaning I could use it again and again? It makes me wonder, what did people do before milk pasteurisation was invented. Surely there is a way to keep this going with raw milk??
I would say if your milk is from a clean source with good 100% grassfed cows, and your culture is also clean, it would work as well or even better than with pasteurized milk. The fermentation cultures are aggressive–that is the whole point of them, after all. Certainly these products were all made using good raw milk!
The very FIRST ones were made by leaving raw milk sitting out.
Do be careful of your source, when it comes to raw milk. It’s a good idea to visit the farm you buy it from, look at how they keep things clean and manage their cows, and be sure you are comfortable with everything. Sanitation is much more critical with raw milk, and there is no room for mistakes. On the other hand, raw milk is far more robust than pasteurized milk, when it IS clean. The natural bacteria in the raw milk will turn it into a clabbered product that is actually safe to consume if you simply leave it sitting out on the counter! Pasteurized milk generally will not ferment on its own–it will rot and go rancid, and would not be safe to drink.
Nothing is safe in life, we all have to decide when and where we want to take risks. Raw milk has a greater risk of transmitting a foodborne illness due to contamination, but it is healthier than pasteurized milk, so long as it IS clean.
I imagine that raw milk from different sources has a different balance of bacteria, which would compete with or collaborate with the bacteria in the culture. You could get fantastic results even better than the original, or results more like the ones Georgia experienced, depending on your cow and its location.
The yoghurt and kefir link show above in the article doesn’t work-
Links above to yogurt and kifr starter products are not working-
Yes, they are working. You need to disable your ad locker when viewing this site,
I have not been able to find raw milk in my area. I have, however been able to find a low temp pasturized, non homogenized whole milk. Do you think this will work with these types of cultures?
Yes. I have used Straus’ non-homogenized, pasteurized whole milk with cultures and just plain yogurt as a starter and it works fine, but do heat the milk to about 160-180 first, cool to 110, then add the culture or yogurt and culture in your yogurt maker, or oven with the pilot light on, or another method. I’ve tested my yogurt maker many times, and it never heats the culturing yogurt above 110.
I remember reading somewhere that viili culture will affect any other culture you have in the house. In other words, if you grow viili in your home and also grow kefir, the viili will overtake the kefir culture. Does anyone know anything about this? Or have experienced this?
Viili is yeasty – and any yeasty ferment has the capacity to overtake other ferments nearby. This is especially true of kombucha. It’s best to store these ferments away from other ferments, but you can culture them both.
This sounds great; however, do people who cannot tolerate dairy use cultured dairy products? Thanks
Some people do – if they’re long-fermented. Other’s won’t. Anyone who has food sensitivities should look into the GAPS diet: http://nourishedkitchen.com/what-is-the-gaps-diet
THANK YOU for this! I spent 8 months in Sweden during college a few years ago and fell in love with all the different cultured milk products. I especially love the taste/texture/consistency of Swedish yogurt and haven’t been able to duplicate it at home. Is there a certain culture recommended for Swedish yogurt? The closest thing I can find (now that it’s been a few years) is Trader Joe’s European-Style yogurt. However, when I use it as a culture for my batches the consistency is never the same (too thick, too thin no matter how I try to time it).
Love this site, thank you for all your hard work, Jenny!
Can you help with something? Is there any difference in the benefit of one culturing process over another? I already use raw milk kefir every day. Do I gain anything by adding the yogurts to my diet, or do I already have these benefits? Besides variety, of course.
Nope. There’s no additional beefut beyond variety. I recommend people try a few to see which one they prefer, and just stick to that. Kitchen life shoukdn’t be complex. We make kefir and Greek-style yogurt. My son is lobbying me to make piima again – his favorite.
Jenny,
You say to have the milk at room temp – but then say 108F. I live in Norway, on the coast where it is ‘warm’ and even on the hottest summer days it does not get that hot! Like where I am if we hit 90 it is everyone freaking out. I have no A/C and only have a small wall heater + fireplace, so the warmest my house gets is 77F.
All this to say, would you place the yogurt near a heat source then? Or just let it stand in out regular? I know that traditional soured milks like Filmjölk/Ymer/KefirMelk ect are ‘soured’ in a colder 64F/basement/dark cool corner temperature.
Thermophilic yogurts culture best between 108 and 112 degrees F. These include things like Greek and Bulgarian yogurts. The mesophilic yogurts (like those listed above), cultured best at room temperature (65 – 78 degrees F).
This blog is great! Keep up the good work.
When reading this post I really wish for everything in it to be true. Sadly Sweden is the only country in Europe in which raw/unpasteurized milk is forbidden by law. No company can use it and it is illegal to sell, even farmers that sell to their closest friends are not really allowed to do so. The filmjölk we drink in Sweden is nothing but a weak fake in comparison to the soured raw milk filmjölk of before. Much of the traditional Swedish cooking has been forgotten or replaced with standardized industrial products that holds no real resemblance with the traditional home cooking products made long ago.
I appreciate this post alot! It deserves to be said and read – ironic how this comes from an north american blog though!
Kind regards
Alexander
Raw milk is illegal also here in Scotland. Not in England though so I can still order raw milk from England and have it shipped by express courier. But the cost is very high:(
I’ve frozen fil mjolk for about 14 months and brought it back to life easily.
I’m curious about any benefits of fil mjolk over the milk from which it is made.
Can anyone address the subject or perhaps refer me to reliable information on it?
10Q, Joe
Thank you for this lovely post, I enjoyed it very much. Here in Finland raw milk is very trendy. Farms are allowed to sell up to 2500 litres of raw milk per year and it is readily available in several stores here in Helsinki (our capital). Raw cow’s and goat’s milk is selled in 1 litre bottles or 3 litre packs. We also have a fairly new food market specialising in local and organic foods which sells raw milk by the litre, you can bring in your own bottle and they will fill it. There is also a milk bar where they use only raw milk in cafe lattes, smoothies etc.
Finland has been influenced both by Sweden in the west and Russia in the east. For instance the viili made on the west coast was stringy, just like fil in Sweden whereas the viili in the East was more creamy, perhaps the eastern Finnish version had its roots in Russia? Viili is mostly consumed in the summers and the best part of it may well be the thin, creamy layer on top of the viili, we often sprinkle it with sugar, cinnamon or both. Viili does not set if it is made during a thunderstorm, so do not try to make it then!
Tettemelk is also called långmjölk and can be made with two different plants: pinguicula vulgaris (native in Northern Europe, Russia, Canada and parts of the US) and drosera intermedia (temperate/tropical climates).
Then there are numerous other lovely fermented milk products in Finland: rahka (kvarg in swedish, a creamy very sour product made of fermented heated milk), kirnupiimä (a special piimä, a by-product of butter), smetana (originally russian, a bit thicker, creamier and tangier than creme fraiche), kermaviili (gräddfil in swedish, its fermented cream a tangy and lighter , more fresh version of creme fraiche, we make dip sauce of it) etc. Also, let’s not forget kvass, an absolutely lovely and superhealthy non-dairy probiotic made of fermented cabbage, beets, carrots, berries and herbs.