Homemade Yogurt - It's Easy, Frugal and Yummy!

What do you need to make homemade yogurt? A lot less than I ever thought you would. Kevin loves eating yogurt for breakfast, and when search for ways to be more frugal, it was suggested that we make our own. In fact, he now prefers my homemade yogurt to commercial yogurt! (This makes me happy.)

Now, you can buy a yogurt maker, and they're really not very expensive and they work just fine. But we barely have enough room in our kitchen for all the stuff we have now, let alone another one-use kitchen appliance. (See one to the right, only costs $40).

I can hardly remember where I learned that you can make yogurt at home, but I'm glad I did. Eventually, I stumbled on this recipe to make yogurt in a slow cooker! From A Year of Slow Cooking. While it is simple to make, I found it to be frustrating. In her pictures, it looks like she has a much older slow cooker. They tend to be more reliable and better working. We got ours at our wedding last year, and we love it! But I found that with making yogurt, it doesn't always keep a steady temperature, so rather than setting it and leaving it, I constantly had to come back and check the temperature with our instant-read thermometer. Not only that, but it took significantly longer to cool off that she claimed it would.

THANKFULLY, I found new directions online that made it easier! Unfortunately, my husband just reinstalled Windows on my computer and lost all my bookmarks, so I am unable to share th e link with you (I've tried to find it!). It still uses a slow cooker, but a little differently.

I thought it might help to explain the basic process for making yogurt in general.

To make yogurt, all you need is a pot, a slow cooker, a big towel or two, a thermometer, milk, store bought PLAIN yogurt--this is the yogurt that comes in a big 32oz. tub. Make sure it is PLAIN, not sweetened or flavored. Once you've made your own homemade yogurt, just throw a cup of it in the freezer to be used the next time. When you want to make more, thaw the yogurt & use where you last used the store bought stuff.

As you notice, there are only two ingredients...milk and yogurt.

Yogurt is a live-culture food. It has, believe it or not, live bacteria in it. But this is GOOD bacteria. It's the kind of bacteria that lives in your intestines and helps you digest things. Good bacteria helps fight bad bacteria, so trust me you want it!

So in order to make yogurt, all you need is to make an environment where the yogurt cultures will multiply, without any other bacteria multiplying too. So we first have to raise the temperature of the milk to between 180 & 200 degrees to kill off all other bacteria. Next we have to cool the milk to between 100 & 120 degrees, which is the optimum temperature for the yogurt to multiply. If possible, we wanna keep it at this temperature for 4-6 hours.

Got it? Ok!

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1) To start out, plug your slow cooker in and set it on low to warm up.

2) Put 1-2 quarts milk (4-8 cups), (or more, depending on how much you wanna make) into a pot. Heat it on LOW, stirring occasionally to prevent burning, until it reaches between 180 & 200 degrees. I usually try to hit between 190 & 195 degrees.

3) Take the pot and place it in a bowl of ice water, and stir until the temperature drops below 120. This will happen much quicker than you may think, at least it did for me.

4) Pour all but one cup of milk into the warmed slow cooker. Mix one cup of yogurt with the reserved milk.

NOTE: Homemade yogurt will not be as thick as commercially processed yogurt. You may add dry milk to the milk/yogurt mixture to thicken it. However, Kevin & I have found that while the yogurt comes out a little bit thicker (not much), it is also a little lumpy/chunky.

5) Add the milk/yogurt mixture to the rest of the milk & stir.

6) Put on the slow cooker lid, unplug it and wrap it in a big towel or two. This will add insulation to try to keep the milk at that ideal 100-120 degrees.

7) Let the yogurt sit for 4-6 hours at least. You may find that it doesn't stay at the ideal temperature for the allotted time, so it may need longer to culture. I like to do all the steps right before bed, and let it culture over night. The live-culture in the yogurt will keep the yogurt from spoiling, but once it's done, it should be transferred to the fridge. I just make one quart at a time and put the homemade yogurt back in the (washed & sanitized) 32 oz. container we got the original store-bought yogurt in.

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NOTE: This is UNSWEETENED yogurt. You're probably not going to want to eat it plain, though some people do. Options for sweetening/flavoring include:
* honey *
* fresh fruit *
*frozen fruit*
*pudding powder*
*granola*
(more on homemade granola some other time)
and the list can go on.