How to Make Kefir

[Music] hi this is Donna from culture food life and I'm here today to teach you how to make kefir there's all kinds of things you can do with kefir and I'm gonna explain to you what it's about and we're here in my kitchen we have all kinds of fermenting vessels here that we're going to show you how to do things with this is where I learn to make cultured foods and I welcome you and I'm excited to show you all the things that we can do and also explain to you what Keeper is and what kefir is is similar to yogurt but it's considered a right-turning bacteria and yogurt is a left-turning bacteria and what that means is that kefir is a colony that goes inside of you and lives and gets rip pathogens gets rid of parasites things like that and finds a place to dominate inside of you and become the dominant bacteria with inside of you and what's wonderful about that is that it be so strong that it can't even be killed by antibiotics parts of it can't but yogurt which is the left-turning bacteria is food for bacteria and only lasts 24 hours and so it's a wonderful food - but kefir is much much stronger there are 36 to 56 good bacterias in homemade kefir and whereas yogurt only has seven and so when you can ingest kefir you get all kinds of properties that you would not get in foods like yogurt even though yogurt is still good for you because it does make the good bacterias grow with inside of kefir has been around for thousands of years it was really helped people preserve their milk and years ago because they didn't have refrigeration they placed kefir cultures into their milk which preserved the milk by acidifying bacterias controlled the environment because the good bacterias would dominate and keep the pathogens and the bad bacteria is out and made the milk safe to drink and preserved it and kept it safe and so when you drink the milk it does the same in you it preserves you it gives you a long life just like it did the people in the caucus mountains who live to be over a hundred years old by drinking kefir every day twice a day they would drink it at almost every meal and there's so many Centurions there that have lived will be way over a hundred and they claim that it's because of the keeper that they drink and it's been around so long that people have all kinds of claims to it for instance in Turkey there were some Scrolls they found from Abraham and he claimed that his long life was credited to fermented milk products and Muhammad claimed that these kefir grains that he got to make fermented milk was from gift from God to him Noah claimed to have gotten these grains from angels on the ark and also the children of Israel claimed that it was the manna from heaven so everybody has a piece of hope of culture of about kefir and what's really neat about it is that it's just been around so long there's all kinds of stories about it because people have been drinking it for thousands of years and it's kind of died in this country it's not as popular as it used to date be and I think it's just because people don't know about it and what it could do so I want to teach you about what kefir has done for me and what it can do for you and how easy and really simple it is to make so we're gonna start with making kefir and we're going to show you all the different ways that you can enjoy it and eat it and first of all I want to show you my kefir here these two jars right here are keeper and inside of these is kefir that I made yesterday and we are going to strain this out and I'm going to show you the little kefir grains this is how you make you fur can you see that it I put it through a strainer and what happens is it drains out the bottom and then you get these little grains that look like little pieces of cauliflower they are not very big and what happens is they grow and multiply they feed off of the lactose in milk the sugars in milk and that's what makes it sour kefir rose only 1% sugar and yogurt is about 4% because there's more good bacterias in keeper and so we're going to show you these see these little guys right here these are kefir grains and I get a million of them they multiply like crazy so you can give them to your friends and they can have them and you'll get you'll get a million of these if you keep this alive and the only way you can kill kefir is to heat it or to not feed it because it's a living microorganisms and it needs food and it needs the lactose from milk to stay alive and right here you can there's big ones they're all different shapes and sizes and we've got little tiny baby ones too and the little baby ones are the strong ones because they're new they're the BRIT make branch off of the other ones people throw these away and they shouldn't throw them away because they're terrific they make milk they make you for faster when you have the little babies in there and so what I've done is I've strained out all these grains see this right here and on what I've got underneath here is kefir and then what you do is you place these grains place these grains in another I like canning jars they're great because everybody has access to them I like the plastic lids you can certainly use metal that's not going to hurt anything but you place the little grains and I use a slotted spoon that really helps to get them and pick them up and you just place them in your jar you always got up put milk in here because they need food to eat they'll die without them and what they do is they change they eat all the sugars out and they change the milk into a fermented drink so the grains are in the jar and then you want to always put milk in the jar to keep them give them something to eat so I'm going to add about now the ratio of milk to grains is about a tablespoon and a half to a tablespoon about a cup of milk and so I probably add probably about four cups to this this is so simple and it's so easy to do because really all it is is adding milk to kefir grains putting a lid on it and letting it sit on your counter for 24 hours and that is it and the next day you have kefir which is here this one here and you just strain it and do the same thing over again and let me show you what it looks like after you've done straining it you can see it's kind of creamy kind of a pourable yogurt that's what it is it's really delicious and what I do is I place it in another jar and I have a big canning jar here but you can put it in anything you want that's glass keeper loves glass because it keeps it super cold it's super clean if you clean it so it's a great that's I think it's the best thing to put Kiefer in it's any kind of glass jar so I'm gonna put this in here and I'm gonna do something that I have done for years that makes keeper taste so much better and it makes the nutrients skyrocket and it's called second fermenting and it takes away some of the sourness of keeper because keeper contended be more sour than yogurt and what I do is and there's a million different ways to do this and I do this but I for instance will take appeal from orange and you can use a lemon you can use really any kind of fruit and I just take a little peel like this or you can take a slice of orange and put it in your kefir and I just drop it in here put the lid back on and instead of refrigerating this you can actually drink this right now it's kefir but I like to let it sit for another half a day to a day with a little bit of flavoring like orange peel for maybe 12 hours usually depending on how warm your kitchen is if it's super this warm in the summertime leave it a little less because it'll ferment faster but it will make the keeper so tasty it makes it so much less sour and it also makes like folic acid and all the B vitamins increase quite dramatically with a kefir and it makes a little bit more bubbly a little bit more carbonated it's really delicious I'm going to show you a couple of things that I have per second fermented my kefir with now I've done it with orange peel I've done it with lemon and I've done it with orange slices you don't want to use too much because then you get kind of a sour taste this one here is what I did two days ago and this I just had some frozen for your leftover from the summer that was in my freezer and I just placed it in here and it's strawberries and peaches and mangoes and you can kind of see if you can see closely it's got it kind of gets like a little bit of a bubbly mess and a little bit more carbonation and it really really tastes good I have done it with garlic peels garlic cloves I placed garlic cloves in the kefir and just let that ferment and I've made dips with that really flavors it really really nice I've also done I've got another one in here that is made with vanilla beans and this is got orc slices in it and this is really delicious it kind of has like a tangy kind of a vanilla vanilla like an Orange Julius type thing and I actually like kefir so much better this way that I can drink it even without sweetening or adding fruit to it I've also done it with mint I've done it with basil leaves there are so many things I've done with a chai tea bag you can second format your key for with anything but I everybody I teach that does this I teach to do it they never go back and ferment and for a minute the other way they always just do the second ferment too because it makes it taste so much better so this is how you make kefir in 24 hours you will have another jar keeper and then you'll take the grains out again strain it out place the milk in another jug to second ferment or you can just drink it and consume it then the nice thing about keeper is that you could probably leave it on your counter a couple of days and it will be fine it will get really sour and I don't really like it when I'm second fermenting it for 48 hours or longer I wouldn't leave it to much more than two or three days you just make keeper and you don't want to make it again so you put it in the milk just like you were gonna make it and put it on the counter but instead you put it in the fridge and this will last one week in your fridge it gives us something to eat and the coldness slows it down so it will consume the lactose in the milk really really slowly I mean won't really make kefir because it really needs to be room temperature but it will still preserve it and that will last week and then you're going to have to change the milk let's say you go on vacation for two weeks then you'll need to double that amount of milk in there so that it will have food for two weeks and it will be fine in your fridge and when you take it out to make it again on your counter sometimes it's a little bit sluggish the first day it'll probably make you for a little bit slower but then in a day it's right back up to speed I love that about kefir that it kind of works for you while you're sleeping on your behalf in your kitchen all by its lonesome and you have a wonderful drink that really does help preserve you and make you healthy and so you can leave it in your fridge if you don't want to make it every day just make sure you give it food that's the one thing that can kill keeper besides heat these are really the two things that people do is they will put it in a hot jar or they'll heat their grains somehow that kills bacteria that's just the way that it is when you heat bacteria you kill it so you have to feed it and you have to make sure that it doesn't get too hot and then your kefir will be safe one of the questions that I get the most from people the emails and things like that is oh no my kefir is separating what do I do have I ruined it is that is it still good to drink can you see I made one so that it's separate can you see the way how it separates from the curds down here what this means is first of all it is not bad to do this don't throw it out I can't tell you how many people throw it I could say think it's gone bad this is just a natural product of fermentation when things over ferment just a little bit you can still mix it up you can still drink it it still tastes good it might be a little slightly more sour but it's still great for you and it just means this ferment a little bit more sometimes my second fermented kefir over here will do that too it's fine it's not a problem you don't have to worry about it and what it means is is that you probably have too many grains to the amount of milk you're putting in because your grains grow all the time so you need to add more milk or you need to take out some of your grains and give to your friends and so either way just increase the milk and sometimes in the summertime it will happen quite often people will have their things start to get a separation of whey and grains and that's just because their kitchens are warm and the winter it happens less frequent frequently but it's really still fine to do and you can even slow down your fermentation time if it's done it started separate take your reins out put in the fridge and drink it so now I'm going to show you how to make kefir cheese and kefir cheese is one of my favorite things to do it it makes keeper taste really tasty for kids for adults for people who are picky and don't like the sourness of kefir it makes wonderful ice cream you can make keep a sub key for sodas with it you can make desserts and dips and it's super super easy to do and it's a lot of fun to do and when you make keeper cheese what you do is you're going to make your kefir and you're going to drain the whey out of it into the bottom of a bowl and you can use that way to culture vegetables and make keeper sodas that are really really delicious and they don't have as much sugar as pop and they have a bubbliness to them like carbonation but it's naturally-occurring carbonation that happens when yeast eat the sugar out of a drink for instance and it creates natural co2 it's really really delicious and a great way to get kefir and your kids you will get yourself a stainless steel strainer or plastic strainer and one that fits in a little this is just a little pirates bowl this really inexpensive and you get them anywhere and you want to place it in a bowl that it will fit into and it will have some way for it to drain down into the bottom and you get a coffee filter you put it in here and then you take your kefir that's second fermented or just Keeper that's regular that you haven't second fermented and you're going to pour it and your coffee filter and you can leave your peeling in here it's fine it'll keep fermenting it and flavoring it so I like to do that even though it's stuck in the bottom of my jar it's still kind of nice to have it in there because it does flavor it and then you want some plastic wrap and you just wrap it around and then you're gonna place this in the fridge after you get this all sealed off and the reason you're gonna do that is because it's gonna slow down the fermentation and it's not gonna keep souring the kefir and make it super sour you're going to place it in the fridge for 12 hours - you can do it 24 hours you can actually do it for a couple days that's fine but the the way is dripping out and you're gonna have cream cheese on top which is similar consistency to cream cheese you're going to have way and it colors sodas and cultured vegetables since and it really is a nice way to make some cheese for yourself and you can actually leave it in the fridge for a couple of days and it's still fine so we're gonna place this in the fridge overnight and then I'm gonna show you I have made some for you to show you and I have this strainer here this is a strainer that I have on my site that I purchased and I really really really like and it's different than the one I showed you but it's specially designed for kefir cheese and it's a little bit bigger and a little bit deeper but you can see the way in the bottom of this bowl that's drained out and then I'm gonna show you we've got some kefir cheese right here in this plastic wrap and take this and you're just gonna plop it out of this thing it comes out really nice that's why I use a coffee filter and it just kind of comes out of your shell like that see it's kind of like cream cheese can you see the consistency of it it's really it's a wonderful thing that you can use you can even use it like this and just flavor with herbs and spices and then you have keeper cheese so you can do all kinds of things with kefir cheese you can make dips you can make ice cream you can make desserts I have a lot of recipes on my site and in my book that I make every day for my family and you can do wonderful things with kefir way and when you put kefir way away you I place it in a glass jug in my refrigerator and this is what you're going to use to make cultured vegetables and keeper soda and so you're going to want to store this but you're going to want to use it right away because it would start to lose its effectiveness because bacteria has to have something to eat and it's already eaten a lot of the good bacterias out of it it'll last about I would use it within the first week to make cultured vegetables in kefir soda otherwise your keeper stoves might be flat it may not culture right and same with your vegetables so I just placed it in a glass jar glass is always best for kefir and this is a clampdown lid that I like to put away and things like that and because of the carbonation sometimes you get and you can place this in the fridge you place your kefir cheese and I've in a just a class dish with a lid and I would also use this within a week or two it can last in your fridge for many months but it will just get more and more sour and it will even drain a little bit more some of the way will drain off so it's best to use it it has the highest amount of good bacteria in it right away and then you just place these in your fridge and try to use them right away so that is how let me show you - this is this is some of my keeper soda that we make and it is it's super bubbly can you see the bubbles and everything in it and I've got some grapes in here and this is one of our kids favorite things to drink and eat in our family and it's another thing you can make with them keeper and keeper cheese this is kind of my favorite project to teach people to do is kiefer I think it's the place that most people should start just because it's easier than the other ones the other ones are not hard and this is certainly not hard you're basically just putting milk in a glass jar leaving on account for 24 hours all these little extra things aren't really something you have to do they're just fun things and extra things to do you can go to my website at cultured food live.com and purchase my book which has all kinds of wonderful recipes they're my family favorites in my book things that we make every day and also on my website you can see more videos and there's more recipes and there's more instructions you can see all kinds of the things that I've showed you here and don't be afraid you're going to mess it up a lot of people get really scared about this kind of stuff because they they think that it's going to make them sick if they don't do it right and the wonderful thing about kefir is that the good bacteria is in keeper are so strong they dominate the culture and control the environment and make the food very very safe to consume and to make so thank you for watching my video I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for coming into my kitchen I had a good time I hope you did too thank you [Music] you

Channel: Donna Schwenk

Views: 1,848,746

Keywords: How, to, Make, Kefir, Cultured Food Life, Donna Schwenk, Probiotic, Educational Film (Film Genre), Cooking (Interest), healthy

Id: SH7L_ZfVU3A

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 05 2015