Does Frozen Yogurt Contain Live Cultures?
But I couldn’t answer Grammar Girl’s question about frozen yogurt for sure without seeing her recipe. Although it might seem an odd way to make a frozen dessert, many recipes start out by heating up milk, adding other ingredients, and then chilling the mixture before adding it to the ice cream maker. The bacteria in yogurt will die if they get any hotter than about 112 degrees F. In Grammar Girl’s recipe, you heat up milk and sugar until it boils. Then you stir in the yogurt and some berries that you’ve pureed in the blender and chilled. If the yogurt is added to boiling milk, the beneficial bacteria will probably be destroyed. Grammar Girl suggested that if she adds the chilled berries first, it would cool the milk down enough that the bacteria in the yogurt would survive. She’s exactly right. As long as the mixture is cooler than 112 degrees F when the yogurt is added, she should be fine. And that’s the problem with frozen yogurt you buy at the grocery or ice cream store. It has to c
