Mar

I made my own yogurt at home

Stuff you'll need

I’ve been working out for a few months, and recently really increased my intensity at the gym, and have been modifying my diet to help me gain weight. I’ve discovered that smoothies are a great way to get extra calories and protein in my diet, and are quick and easy before going to work out.

The thing is, yogurt is kind of expensive. You can buy a whole gallon of milk for what you’d pay for a quart of yogurt. By making your own, you can get four times the yogurt for the same price!

There are lots of instructions on the internet for making your own. I followed the steps at wikiHow and had success the first time.

Here’s the stuff you’ll need:

A heating pad. Make sure your’s doesn’t have auto shut-off, or you’ll be running to turn it back on every hour. I used an old one we had around the house.
Containers for your yogurt. I used Rubbermaid TakeAlongs Twist & Seal Liquid Storage containers, 4 cup (32-ounce, one quart).
A thermometer. I used a digital thermometer because they’re way easier to read.
Milk. I used whole milk, because I prefer it, and other sites say it makes thicker yogurt without having to add dried milk.
Commercial live-culture yogurt. I used a couple of heaping tablespoons of some plain Danon yogurt. Remember, it must have live cultures. Don’t use flavored yogurt, either—not sure what would happen if you did, but you might end up with an odd flavor.

First thing you’ll need to do is heat up the milk to about 185°F to kill off any bad bacteria. If your milk is already pasteurized, shouldn’t be a problem, but you really gotta do this step. Use a water-bath to keep from scorching your milk—just put your pot in a larger pot filled with water up to the same level as the milk. I heated mine on the gas stove at medium-high.

Once you reach 185°F, cool the milk. WikiHow says use ice water in the sink, but just cold tap water worked very quickly. Cool to about 110°F, then stir in your live culture yogurt.

Pour it into your clean containers.

Then wrap the containers up in the heating pad. I read that you should also wrap it in a towel, but my heating pad ended up putting out plenty of heat, and I had to remove the towel so it didn’t get too hot.

Let incubate for about 7 hours or so—shorter for sweeter but thinner yogurt, longer for thicker, but tangier yogurt. You’ll want to keep an eye on it, and maintain the temperature at around 100°F. I used my little digital thermometer which has a range of -40 to 302°F.

When the yogurt’s done, it will be congealed in a solid mass. You’ll probably see some greenish liquid on top. This is whey, and is a normal product of the process—you’ve probably seen it on commercial yogurt, too.

Store it into the fridge where it should keep for a couple weeks. Make lots of yogurt smoothies, or mango lassi or other yogurt goodies.

Some things to experiment with after you make your first batch:

Try varying the incubation time. As I mentioned, this can change the yogurt’s consistency.
If you don’t want to use commercial yogurt as a starter, look at the many freeze-dried cultures available. If you’re really into probiotics, you can get just the results you want by varying the species of bacteria in the culture.
I’m not sure I’d want to try it, but you can supposedly make “fruit on the bottom” yogurt by putting jam or fruit in small containers before pouring in the milk.
You can thicken the yogurt or make yogurt cheese by draining the yogurt in a few layers of cheesecloth in a colander. You’ll need thicker yogurt for taztziki.