Zoh Probiotics Greek Yogurt Starter Culture | Reusable Heirloom Starter for Creamy, Tangy Yogurt | Lab-Tested, Non-GMO, Gluten-Free | Beginner-Friendly | Makes Endless Batches

I highly recommend the product. I wish I could give this product 10 stars because I am in love. It worked very well for me and yielded buttery dahi with an almost cuttably thick texture. A few things I learned in the process that might help:1. Full-cream milk with 6 percent fat content would yield the best taste and texture — silky smooth with a buttery mouthfeel. ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS. It’s infinitely tastier than store-bought that there is no point comparing.Regular milk (i.e. toned milk with 3 pct fat) also resulted in good dahi. It would taste slightly less creamy, but the texture was great and it set very well.2. UHT milk (the milk that lasts for months at room temperature) yields good dahi, but I noticed that UHT milk dahi was slightly grainy and lacked the buttery quality, although it set very well and there was no whey separation.3. If using normal pasteurised milk or raw milk, avoid boiling the milk to 100 degree C. Heat the milk on lowest possible flame for 20-30 minutes, stirring, holding the maximum temperature at 85-95 degree C. Do NOT allow it to bubble up at all. Then cool the milk down for about 25-30 minutes to 45 degree C (the milk pan should be pleasantly warm against your palm). Milk should NOT be too hot, otherwise the culture will die. Heated and slightly cooled milk has the kind of protein structure that is optimal for coagulation. However too much heat denatures the milk proteins, inhibiting coagulation, resulting in grainy dahi (and that is also the reason why UHT milk dahi is grainy because the milk gets heated to above 135 degree C during factory processing). On the other hand, if you combine cold milk and cold culture and let it sit, you will end up with with whey separation and dahi would not set.4. Take a little of this warm milk in another bowl and add contents of one sachet. Let it rest 5 minutes for the culture to rehydrate. Then stir again and pour it back to the rest of the milk. Mix. Then pour in containers/jars for setting. One sachet can culture 500 ml milk. For reculturing you can use as much milk as you want. For me, 1-1/2 tbsp old dahi per 1 litre milk is the ratio that has worked best.5. Temperature is extremely important for good textured dahi. The dahi would become thick and creamy when surrounding temperature is 38-42 degree C. It’s good to create an incubator environment. Maybe use a thermal pot to keep the jars warm or keep them wrapped in a hot towel or keep them in an oven (turned off) with a bowl of hot water kept adjacent. Or use a yogurt maker or slow cooker/dehydrating machine/instant pot which have yogurt settings. Once the dahi is set, after at least 8 hours, transfer to refrigerator. The texture firms up a bit in the fridge.6. First batch of mine took 12 hours to fully set, while subsequent batches set faster, within 8 hours.7. While reculturing, do not add too much of old dahi to make new dahi. For 1 litre milk, use 1-1/2 tbsp of old dahi. Adding too much culture can affect the texture adversely. Before adding to milk, beat the old dahi to break it up, otherwise it will not distribute evenly in the milk, and it will affect the texture of final product. Let the old dahi come to room temperature while the milk is getting heated and cooled.8. Dahi-making might seem daunting at first but it soon becomes a habit. I don’t buy readymade dahi anymore. It’s actually rather easy to get it right.9. The package contains two sachets. I have used only one sachet. The other one can be frozen and used anytime. It lasts years. This can be your failsafe in case you finish all old dahi and nothing remaining for reculturing.10. I make dahi only once a week. It stays good without turning too sour in the fridge for 10 days at least. You can use even 2 week old dahi for reculturing and it will work.11. Adding sugar and flavouring/fruit to milk can affect the texture of dahi. So if you’re planning to make set mishti doi or flavoured yogurt, wait until you have enough culture to experiment. I add flavouring and sugar/jaggery only after the dahi is set and then mix it gently. However, it is possible to add a sugar/jaggery directly in milk and and get good dahi. You just need to take care of ambient temperature for the culture to work quickly and smoothly. The quicker the dahi sets, the better the texture.12. You can add milk powder (skimmed or whole) to milk before heating to increase the protein content and result in even thicker dahi. You just need to make sure the milk powder doesn’t have any sugar, flavouring or other additives.

Its like this product which is supposed to be curd culture is not active at all!!Not sure if this tomfoolery of a product is really made from yogurt culture or bird dropping!Should it even cost 10Rs given it didn't make curd at all , even home curd starter would have made wonders with so much boiled with and added Amul cream in the attempt made with this crapheap product.600/- got robbed for nothing, absolutely zero worth product took away hours of life for nothing, milk got rotten, this gunk product is so worse that good quality milk and amul cream all went rotten and got wasted, even home curd starter would have made a creamy tasty curd with so much quality Amul cream added in the attempt to make curd with this tommyrot product.The process followed is explained later.When we add so much cream to milk like I did and kept it in such temperature regulated environment, even home curd starter would have made thick creamy tasty set curd but this product is a total letdown absolutely, not sure if the culture was already dead or expired long before, the customer care number was switched off as per network message.This product has several drawbacks:1) Seems expired (atleast the unit that is delivered).2) THe product is not a fine powder and as it has thin sooji/rava like consistency, this became a major bottleneck and it is a challenge to dissolve this gently (only a mixer could mix this floating sooji like product), took 20 minutes to disssolve as it floated and stuck to the sides of the container for half the time.They really need to get it into finer powder (at colder temperature to not disturb the culture).3) If the company later says to add more cream and boil milk to reduce it to half the volume, then what the heck? if we boil off half the milk to make it thick, even home curd starter will do better job instead of this gunk goo trashheap of a product that doesnt work, expired (assuming it was active before it became ineffective)First things first: Used controlled environment by boiling whole milk + added AMul cream (cream tetra packet which has 3 more months of safe use was opened and generous amount addded to whole milk), After boiling milk and let it reach room temperature, again raised it to 40Celsius in a controlled heating appliance, then added this crappy rot of a product slowly to 1Litre of whole milk, by slowly it took over 20 minutes to stir this as this product is not powdery but more grainy and clumped.Then this mixture is kept in a Curd maker which has sensors and heat control designed specifically to regulate curd making in about 7.5 hours (varies as the sensors detect curd consistency).This actually proved that the Curd maker is real deal, it sensed something is wrong with the mix and took 11hours 45 minutes before concluding!! on the Thick setting of curd maker and that is the maximum duration for the sensors, the curd maker gaveup after that.The first doubt arose when curd maker didn't display completion in 7.5 hours but took abnormally long 11.5 hours, so opened the container after half-day and saw half-rotten milk.Quality milk, quality Milk cream, Time spent, Money all got wasted because of this rubbish product which is abysmally ineffective.If the seller's intention is not to take buyers for a ride, then they should never talk about adding high-fat milk, boiling a lot etc.Does our Home curd demand all this? does home curd demand boiling and evaporating lot of milk, Our home curd works with any milk skimmed or not isn't it?In comparison to this rot product, Home curd starter does a commendable job for long in our lives, so faithfully makes curd day after day.All the value of home curd is so clear after this rot of a product disappointed totally, it was a complete letdown and a rip-off by company which is selling exorbitantly priced useless scrap productIt is a shame that the seller claims it makes buttery curd when in fact cant even make curd from skim milk as per one of the answers seen, so why this fraudulent sales attempt by claiming "buttery flavour with a satin like texture"! Why oh why?

BeautifulTaste and great culture … but if you want thick texture then you have to hang it

Mankind has been making yogurt for thousands of years. For most part, they've relied on their senses and experience to set the yogurt. I am sure Plato enjoyed a spoonful of Greek yogurt too, tho' I am not sure he wrote about it.Cut to the 21st century, and another Greek yogurt lover, desperate to escape liquidy, runny Indian Greek yogurts, and with barely Rs 600/- to spare, decided to invest in a powdered culture, said to have worked miracles for other faithful. Oh, he invested in a fancy food thermometer also, just to get the exact requirements down to a pat - like heat to 72 deg or something and then cool to 45. Normally he would have just felt the side of the vessel, when cooling.One 500ml Amul Gold Full Cream Milk packet, one Rs 300/- worth Zoh culture, and about 10 hrs later, what he got was a semi-solid mass of what might be called wannabe yogurt. He tasted it, if it came close to Greek legends like Fage etc...but could really not tell...there was nothing distictinctive...Wait wait...I know what you are thinking...that I aint done that hanging-curd thing yet so technically I am not still talking abt Greek yogurt.Well, been there and done that too...the final chakka/hung-yogurt taste is very slightly tangy...but not sufficiently so.Zoh disappointed!I really do not fancy the idea of calling up customer support to inquire abt yogurt making...my cook-didi who comes in to prepare food laughed when she saw the fancy-schmancy thermometer just to make yogurt...I've hidden it now.Well, the lengths to which greek yogurt lovers will go to get their fix. I tried. It should not be a labor of Hercules, is what I think.