00:00Is this the world's best yogurt?
00:03Real Greek yogurt owes its popularity to its thick, creamy consistency.
00:08We'll show you how it's made and how versatile it can be.
00:11But what makes it so special?
00:16It's very sick. It's not like the regular yogurt you buy in a super organ.
00:22It's a super food. It's full of probiotics.
00:26Above all, it's healthy.
00:29We're visiting one of Athens' oldest yogurt producers.
00:33The Stani dairy in the center of the Greek capital has been making yogurt for almost 100 years.
00:40It's served fresh in the in-house café.
00:43In Greece, yogurt is traditionally made from sheep's milk, with cows or goat's milk being more recent variants.
00:51Owner Thanasis Karigiorgos learned the secrets of yogurt production from his parents and grandparents.
00:56The recipe has remained unchanged to this day.
01:03Our business is an archive of tastes and smells, a time capsule.
01:10The last batch of yogurt contains the cultures for the next batch.
01:16And it goes on, one after the other, going back almost 100 years.
01:23In the basement dairy, the process is always the same.
01:30We heat the milk slightly to 40 degrees Celsius to make it a little thinner.
01:38Then we run it through a filter.
01:43Finally, we heat the milk to 90 degrees.
01:47Some of the water evaporates as we stir.
01:52This gives us thicker milk and, as a result, a firmer yogurt.
02:03We pour the milk into pots and let it cool down to 45 degrees.
02:10Then we add the lactic acid bacteria from the last yogurt culture
02:15and let it sit at 42 degrees for three hours.
02:19That lets the mixture thicken.
02:23After 12 hours of cooling, the yogurt is ready.
02:28It is thickened further by draining it through a cloth.
02:31Larger manufacturers use huge sieves or a centrifuge.
02:35Thanassa still does this by hand.
02:40A broad, strained yogurt is known as Greek yogurt.
02:44It mostly uses cow's milk, which produces thin yogurt.
02:56Traditional Greek yogurt has been made from sheep's milk since antiquity.
03:03What they call Greek yogurt abroad has to be strained.
03:10Because the yogurt produced there is not thick enough to stand on its own.
03:17It has to be strained so that it's more like Greek yogurt.
03:27Real Greek yogurt must be produced in Greece.
03:31If it isn't, it may only be marketed as Greek-style yogurt.
03:37What for Greeks is a part of everyday life is for tourists a taste experience.
03:44This is a product we've grown up with.
03:49It's the best. The best yogurt I ever eat.
03:56What do you think? Is Greek yogurt the best in the world?
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