Heat. Cool. Incubate.
Those are the three steps it takes to make yogurt at home. That’s it! You don’t need a fancy yogurt maker, a dehydrator or mail order starter cultures. All you need is a pint of REAL yogurt, a gallon of milk and some jars. And a heating pad or oven or crock pot. I use a heating pad and will give directions using that tool, but you can use whatever method you like to incubate your yogurt. More about that later. To start with, wouldn’t you like to eat THIS for breakfast, knowing that you made the yogurt and picked the berries yourself?
We’re lucky here in the Willamette Valley to have such good quality, and inexpensive yogurt available at the grocery store. Nancy’s yogurt is “real” yogurt, with no added sugar or thickening agent, and plenty of probiotic critters. The same cannot be said for most yogurt found in the grocery store. If you’ve read a yogurt label recently, you’ll know what i mean. I recently purchased some Tillamook yogurt, thinking that they’re a great, localish dairy and make wonderful cheese so their yogurt MUST be good, right? No. Upon reading the label (after i got home, woops) i found gelatin and other odd ingredients that have NOTHing to do with yogurt. Disappointing. Don’t even get me started on the other name brand yogurts in all manner of wasteful one-time-use packaging. Shudder. Eating and feeding our loved ones ‘real’ food, full of nourishment and lacking unhealthful ingredients is important, and making/serving homemade yogurt is a great way to do just that. And it’s really easy. And frugal. And waste reducing. Here’s how to do it!
To start with, here are the tools you will need:
- A large pot. Your soup pot will do just fine. It must be large enough to hold a gallon of milk with at least an inch of headspace.
- A meat thermometer.
- A heating pad (or crock pot, or oven, or dehydrator, or yogurt maker. I prefer a heating pad.)
- Some clean towels.
- Clean jars, pints or quarts.
- A canning funnel.
- A ladle is helpful.
- An immersion blender is a luxury.
Other than those basic tools, you will need 1 pint of starter yogurt and 1 gallon of milk. My starter was a pint of Nancy’s plain non-fat yogurt, and my milk is local Junction City dairy, Lochmead Dairy’s 1% milk. A fuller fat yogurt starter will make for a thicker, creamier homemade batch. Use your favorite.
Homemade Yogurt
- Pour the milk in the pot and slowly heat to about 180 degrees. Keep the burner at medium high or below. (I’m still playing with this high number to get the best yogurt, but this has been my starting point since i started making yogurt. Try heating to a lower temp, but never allow the milk to actually boil. Different high temps will make slightly different yogurt. Experiment!) You can tell it’s at about the right temperature because the milk will get ‘foamy’ on the top.
- Cool the milk back down to 110 degrees. I like to immerse the pot in the sink with ice and water.
- Once cooled, add the pint of yogurt and stir really well. This is where that immersion blender would come in handy.
- Pour the inoculated milk into your jars. I usually start with the ladle and then pour right from the pot. Stir occasionally and top off each jar with the ‘dregs’ from the pot to evenly mix the starter.
- Place the jars on a towel on a heating pad set to medium, unlidded and wrap snuggy with several towels.
- After 1 hour, turn heating pad down to low and go about your day.
- After 7-9 hours, unwrap the jars and behold the magic: YOGURT! Lid and stick in the fridge to enjoy for the next several weeks.
I’ve been making my own yogurt for years, though took quite a break since i moved from Austin to Oregon. I’m finally back on my yogurt making schedule, and make a new batch every 2-3 weeks depending how ravenously we’ve been consuming it. To see some more pretty pictures of my yogurt, and follow my other adventures, head on over to Pocket Pause.
Do you make your own yogurt? When did you start?
We’ve been making our own yogurt for 3 years now. I tried the crockpot method at first, but found that letting it “yog” in the microwave works great, because it’s a small enough space to trap the heat. I make a new batch every week or so. Since we always have it, we substitute it for just about any tangy dairy product. This morning I used in in pancakes instead of buttermilk and they were fantastic.
Please elaborate on the microwave technique… do you turn the microwave on???
Well, we used to keep it in the oven, but then I once accidentally baked it while preheating the oven for dinner. The heat from the yogurt itself keeps the microwave warm enough to do the trick without turning it on. We let it go for 10-12 hours, but I think the time depends your starter and how tangy you want it.
http://eatlocal365.com/2012/01/22/yogurt-fail/
We make our own yogurt too- for about 3 years now. Wow, I hadn’t realized it been that long! But rather than use store bought yogurt to begin (and have to heat and cool each time) we bought a mesophilic culture. These cultures do their thing at room temperature so it’s as easy as pouring milk into a mason jar, stirring in some of last week’s yogurt, and letting it set on the counter overnight before refrigerating.
Fascinating! I sure like that concept, as i am notorious for boiling the milk or forgetting about it completely as it cools and i’m off doing other things.
Where did you get your culture?
I’ve been making our yogurt for years as well, and it is truly the easiest item I make in my kitchen. Your instructions are even longer than mine! I go straight from pouring into jars to wrapping in a fuzzy blanking and ignoring for up to 15 hours!
I encourage everyone I meet to make their own yogurt, and swear they will never go back.
it is difficult not to get verbose.
i’ll try a longer incubation time next go round to see what i think. do you keep them warm during incubation, or just wrap and let it be?
Thanks for reminding me how easy it is to make yogurt! I need to get back to it – my husband and I eat a lot of (very good, but expensive) store-bought stuff. I’ve never used a heating pad though – instead I take the water that I’ve boiled my jars in (to sterilize them), pour it into a cooler, add the jars of inoculated milk, and let it sit overnight. Seems like there are lots of good, quick methods that folks have. It’s great to share!
I’ve been making yogurt for quite a while too. Since we pay so much for good raw milk I don’t heat the milk up higher than 90/100 to start with before mixing in the culture.
I love to make this in the summer when I can just throw the jars up in the attic for the day – it’s the perfect temp up there to make nice thick yogurt!
THAT’s a great idea, Susy. I used my car a few times back in Texas. I used to use raw milk for yogurt too, but decided to drink the raw milk raw, and ferment the non-raw for yogurting.
I am glad to hear that about only heating it to 90-100. I hate heating the raw milk to killing all the good stuff in there.
I put my yogurt in a cooler with some warm water (120) and close the lid. It is ready in 3 hours (or a bit more in the winter time)
I place my jar of yogurt in a drink cooler that I have heated prior to with boiling water while I was heating the milk. Ditto the jar. Then I dump the water out and place the jar inside, lid it and wrap in a blanket overnight. I like this method because it does not require any electricity other than for heating the milk. If you don’t have a cylindrical cooler another jar of hot water in a larger cooler along side the yogurt jar will keep it warm.
What about using a seed mat? (Those mats you use to keep your seed stars warm). I’d love to find a year-round use for mine! I also love being reminded that here’s another package I can get rid of!
That should work, depending on how warm it heats. i don’t have one of those, so i wouldn’t know.