Food products preferred in USA

Thanks Ranchu.I did the same way as you mentioned.I will try this tumble option,may be with a small stainless steel cup.Thanks for the share.

 

Now, I know why Raji has the bunny? mouse? picture in her avatar. She is doing experiments with the cooking and its a lab pet which has to try the experiments

 

Ranchu its bcoz of the heat in our hand that makes the fermentation easy..it works in making chpati dough aslo..results in soft chapati/roti

 

sometimes the measurement may go wrong rg..i put 4:1(rice:urad dal) for grainder..as you are using blender try 4:1&half (little fenugreek helps in crispy dosa) and keep the batter in warm oven as Ranch said for one full day plus overnight..as it takes time to ferment in winter.. (use your hand to mix..)

 

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This is a nice tip.Thanks cinderella

I tried 2:1 in Preethi Mixer.I soaked them seprately and mixed with my hands and followed all the instructions.Thanks for the info

 

The old American trick for fermentation place in winter is to put it on top of the water heater (the big one for the house supply). You might want to wrap it in towels at least on top.

The fancy new ovens have a dough raising cycle and I have used that successfully. Gas ovens that have a pilot light have also been good as the slight heat from pilot light (door closed) might be enough for even temp. I also wonder if you rig up a box with a light bulb (use some small lamp with incandescent light bulb not tube light) in the box for warming. Friend who has honey biz uses this method for slowly liquifying solidified honey.

Ranchu: are you using an electric egg poacher? I have successfully used the small size Pyrex custard cups in the steamer racks on top of rice cooker.

 

I realize this posting is several years old at this point but I may be able to clarify some of the issues here a little bit.

Firstly you cannot make butter from yogurt, and you cannot make butter from grocery store milk in the USA because it is homogenized - eg it has been treated so that the cream is in suspension in the milk. That's why you don't have to shake it up.

Actually the vast majority of milk in India is water buffalo milk not cows milk - water buffalo milk is much much higher in fat content than any cows milk. The closest you can get to it here in the US is Jersey cow's milk. There are some regional dairies where you can buy homogenized milk, or you can seek out a farmer and buy raw milk - keeping in mind that raw milk is not pasteurized and will require some additional safety measures when you are buying from an individual farmer.

Another option is to buy milk from Amish farmers. Also if there is an Amish community near you you may be able to buy hand-churned butter from an Amish farmer's wife or an Amish grocery store, so make ghee from that.

If you have to start from pastuerized but unhomogenized milk (from a regional dairy) you can make butter from that quite safely. You may also be able to find such milk at a place like Whole Foods or The Fresh Market or a health-food store. It must NOT be homogenized.

If you must start with raw milk there are specific safety measures you must take before attempting to make butter but I no longer remember all the details. You can do a web search or check with a county extension agency for more information about that. I would not feed any unpasteurized product to a child under the age of 3.

If you have the cream (grocery store cream also will not work as it has a ton of stabilizers and emulsifiers and stuff in it) you can make butter by putting it in a large jar and rolling it back and forth on a tabletop but it does take a long time. There are other ways to hand make butter - there is a small hand washer tub sold by Lehman's Nonelectric which you can use to make butter instead, it is a small barrel-shaped tub, maybe 2 or 3 gallons capacity, which turns on an axle, you turn it by hand. It's intended to hand wash small amounts of clothes but is frequently used by people who make only small amounts of butter once in awhile for making butter instead. Just don't ever use it for anything else and make sure you clean it thoroughly after each use. It was around $30 ten years ago, probably a little more than that now.

Sour cream also will not be useful for anything like this as it has a lot of stabilizers and emulsifiers and other chemicals in it too, that is why the other poster had no luck with it. Most yogurt also has all kinds of thickeners and stabilizers and other chemicals that ruin it for this purpose or for using to start culture for home made yogurt or for paneer. Use only organic yogurt with no additives - even if it says "Natural" that is not good enough, check the ingredient label, and if there is anything on there you can't pronounce or it says anything besides milk, whey, like that - it won't work.

The type of cultured butter described in the article is not common in this country any more but you may be able to find it through a health food store or an Amish community, at the very least you should be able to find some local source for unhomogenized or even raw milk and make it from scratch yourself, if you really want to.

 

I never thought of putting the dosa batter on the water heater! I did recently find the best place to ferment is on top of the fridge near the back, because heat rises off the coils and its usually one of the warmest places in the house. In our place the fridge is in a corner and a vent blows heat there so in the winter at least it stays warm pretty much all the time. I've also found that it takes a lot longer than the 8 hours people keep telling me it should take - when I finally just let it sit until it looked and smelled right it was 24 hours at least.

In over 30 years I have struggled so much with dosa batter. Burned a lot of blender up trying to grind it, then couldn't get it to ferment properly, until just recently I am finally having some luck with it! Now if I can just get the proper thickness down - sometimes they come out crispy and sometimes not and I think it depends on how thick the batter is, LOL!