Making Homemade Yogurt

Homemade yogurt really is pretty easy to make. It take a bit of time, but it’s really not hard.

The hardest part of making homemade yogurt is waiting for the milk to heat up and then to cool back down again. And because you are looking for specific temperatures, it’s not something you can just walk away from.

In making homemade yogurt all you need is some milk and some active live yogurt cultures. This sound intimidating but it’s really not. Go to the store and read the label of the plain yogurt. If you’re getting the right one, it will say that it contains active live cultures.

You’ll need about a cup of your live cultures. I generally buy one of those little serving size cups and that works fine.

I have found that different brands produce different tastes. So try different ones. You may find one tastes better to you.

In making homemade yogurt, you’ll heat your milk up to 180 degrees making sure you stir a lot to ensure you don’t scald your milk. You want it to heat up, but you don’t want to burn it.

Once you’ve heated your milk, remove it from the heat and let it cool. Some have suggested you can set your pan in a sink with some cool water in it to help move this step along. I’ve not done that, but I can see where it would work.

When your milk cools to about 90 degrees, you add your yogurt with the live cultures. Stir your yogurt until that is all dissolved.

Now, I have a yogurt maker. I bought it 4-5 years ago and found it to be really easy to use. But, there are a lot of recipes out there showing how to set your yogurt in your oven with just the light on and let it set over night. I’ve never done this, but I really need to try it.

If you’d like to try that, I suggest you do your own research to ensure everything is just right, so you don’t waist a half gallon of milk.

I pour my dissolved yogurt with live cultures and milk into my yogurt maker and plug it in. It keeps it at a very low temperature and I set the time on it for 8 hours. You’ll note on my machine, there’s not actually a timer, it’s just numbers. You move the pointer to the number corresponding to the time you’re to take it out. This is just a reminder, so you still can’t just forget it.

After 8 hours, you have yogurt. You’ll find that there is a LOT of whey in your container as well. I like my yogurt really stiff, almost like a soft cheese.

You can make your yogurt any consistency you like. I add all the yogurt into a clean white dishtowel, and tie it up to let it drain. The longer it drains, the thicker it will become. So this is completely up to whatever you like.

As a general rule, I will tie mine up and let it hang overnight.

After you have removed as much of the whey as you would like, it’s done. Put it in a container and put it in the fridge.

Now you can use a cup of this yogurt to make your next batch. I’ve read that you can’t do that forever, but I can’t say from experience how long you can use your last batch to start the next. I have a bad habit of forgetting to save some for my next batch. But I have done that up to 3 different batches.

Homemade Yogurt

Ingredients

• Half gallon of milk
• About a cup of plain yogurt (Be sure it contains active cultures. It will say on the label).

Directions

Heat your milk to 180 degrees slowly. Make sure you stir regularly so ensure it doesn’t scorch or stick to the bottom.

Once your milk reaches 180 degrees, remove it from the heat and let it cool. You can set your pan in a bit of cool water in the sink to hurry this along if you’d like.

Once your milk has cooled to almost 90 degrees, add your live cultured yogurt and stir to dissolve. This works better if your live cultured yogurt is at room temperature.

Add your mixture to your yogurt machine and plug it in. Let it set for 8 hours.

Then drain the whey to your liking.

I haven’t written anything on the uses of whey yet, but I’ll have to do that in the future. There are a ton of things it can be used for and it’s really healthy.

So many ways to eat your yogurt

There are so many ways to eat your homemade yogurt. You can eat it with fruit or sometimes I will pour honey over it or I add granola to it. Sometimes all three. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to flavor it.

The way I make it, it could actually be used as a cheese too if you wanted. You could add some herbs to it and spread it on crackers or a bagel.

Or you could just mash some fruit into it and flavor it that way. I’ve not tried that yet, but it sounds good, so I may have to give that a try. I usually just add my fruit on top.

I’d love to hear your experiences with making yogurt. Let me know how you’ve flavored your yogurt.

If you’ve used the oven method, I’d love to hear how it turned out. I’ll be giving that a try soon too, just to see.

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Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey