Making Yogurt

Do you like yogurt? I love yogurt! Have you heard you need fancy equipment to make it? Well you don’t! I am going to tell you how! I’ve been making yogurt since about 1976. That’s about when I started learning to do just about everything on this website!

Yogurt is pretty pricey these days. I think it always has been really but it’s pretty inexpensive to make. Here in my area one 6 ounce container of Name Brand yogurt costs between 69¢ and $1.40. That a good bit if you like to eat it often or have kids that like to eat it with their lunch everyday!

I sometimes like yogurt with fruit, sometimes vanilla, sometimes coffee. Yogurt is one of those things that’s supposed to be healthy and good for you but I don’t let that scare me. I enjoy the tartness and the nice creamy rich flavor too much to let a little thing like healthy get in my way!

Did you know that you can make 21, 6 ounce servings of yogurt with one gallon of milk? You can. And it’s pretty easy to do. It does take a bit of patience and some time but you can make yogurt not only for a fraction of the cost but with a fraction of the calories of commercially available yogurts with only the ingredient you want! No preservatives – No chemicals. Just all natural good creamy yogurt!

Oh did you know that commercially made yogurts have additives like gelatin, corn starch and up to 6 teaspoons of sugar? WOW! Who needs that right? Just adds tons of calories and nothing good!

By now you asking yourself, how do I make yogurt? How much would you like to make? A quart? A !/2 gallon or even a gallon it’s up to you. The larger the batch the longer it takes so I wouldn’t make more than one gallon at a time. Let’s start with ½ gallon shall we?

How t Make Yogurt

A stainless steel or glass pot large enough to hold the milk

a few heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt (It must say "contains live active yogurt cultures" – I use Dannon)

Optional - 1/3 cup of carnation powdered to thicken if needed

You can use any kind of milk 1%, 2% whole milk or skim. I prefer whole milk because it’s creamier but I often use 2% milk just to lower the cost.

If you are using skimmed milk and want it a little creamier you could add a pinch of Knox unflavored gelatin if you want or a bit more powdered milk. Stay away from Ultra High Temperature (UHT) pasteurized milk.

1. Set the milk out at room temperature for about an hour to warm it up. This will make heating the milk go faster.

2. Take your pot and place it on the stove.

3. Pour in the milk I the pot and heat it on medium high

4. Add In the powdered milk and mix well

5. Heat the milk to 187°F and hold it there for 30 minutes to kill off any bacteria and get the milk ready. Stir to keep the milk from burning on the bottom.

6. Let the milk cool to 100°F. You can speed this up by putting it in a sink of ice water and stirring the milk.

7. Warm your oven at it lowest setting and turn it off leaving the light on. The object here is to keep the milk at about 80°F

8. Place a few heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt in a small bowl.

9. Add some of the warm milk to the yogurt and mix well. This will make it thinner ad easier to add to the warm milk.

10. Add this mixture to the warm milk and mix well

Place Yogurt in a bowl Add warm Milk Mix well Skim warm milk Mix yogurt into warm milk

11. Place the pot in your warm oven with the light on and leave it for about 8 hours without disturbing. After about 4 hours it will begin thickening. I leave it overnight and check it in the morning.

12. By morning you will have a pot of nice plain unflavored yogurt! Congratulations! Chill it for a few hours and it will be wonderfully tart yogurt you made all by yourself!

How to Make Toppings

Well I have lots of ideas for toppings. I usually go by what I can get a good deal on, the time of year etc. Right now it’s the middle of winter and good fresh fruits are demanding a premium price – so I got frozen and canned fruits. If you buy canned fruits stick to the no sugar or light syrup varieties if you want to keep the sugars down! Just about any fruit will work as will different flavorings.

Okay – here’s tonight’s fruit flavors; Mango, Peach, Blueberry and Apricot. These are my favorites!

Let’s start with peaches. This is my favorite way to do peaches. Fresh is best, then frozen but alas it’s winter! I couldn’t find any frozen ones either so I got no sugar added peaches canned in pear juice.

1) Open a can of peaches and drain liquid into a bowl.

2) Throw peaches into a blender or small blender/chopper

3) Blend peaches until they are smooth

4) add about ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract and blend again. This is optional but it’s the way I like it.

5) Taste it. If you want it sweeter add honey, sugar or some other sweetener. If you are using canned peaches in heavy syrup you could use the juice. It’s all up to you – you can make any flavor your want. Experiment and have fun.

Ingredients Blended Peach Apricot Mango Peach & Blueberry fruits Plain Yogurt the next day

As I mentioned earlier you can use almost anything to mix your favorite flavors.

A few drops of vanilla extract for vanilla yogurt, or other extracts like mandarin orange, almond, pistachio, cherry, mint etc.

Use instant coffee with a little water for coffee flavored yogurt.

Syrups like raspberry or blueberry used for pancakes or jams, jellies, and preserves. As with most things in the kitchen it is limited only by your personal taste and imagination.

ENjoy!

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