I started making my own homemade yogurt about a year ago when I ran across a recipe on the Frugal Girl website.
I still use this same process because it’s easy and now that I’ve done it so many times I’m able to whip it up pretty fast.
I like making yogurt mainly because it taste so much better and it cost a lot less than store bought.
It’s easy as could be, all you do is
- heat up milk
- cool it down
- add a cup of prepared yogurt
- pour it into jars
- let the jars sit in a cooler with warm water for several hours.
I can get local raw milk so that’s what I make my yogurt with, but you can use commercial whole milk too.
- 1 gallon full fat milk
- 1 cup of non flavored yogurt (your starter yogurt)
- A heavy bottom stock pot (not cast iron)
- A thermometer
- A Whisk
- Canning funnel
- Measuring cup or ladle
- Quart size mason jars (preferably wide mouth)
- A cooler
This is what I do:
- Pour your gallon of milk into a heavy bottomed stock pot
- Gradually bring the temperature of the milk up to 190 – 195 degrees while gently stirring occasionally (do not scrape the bottom of the pot as it may scald a bit and you don’t want that in your yogurt)
- Fill a sink with ice cold water while milk is reaching temperature
- Gently lower the pot of milk into the ice water to cool the temperature down to 120 degrees
- Remove the pot from the sink of water on to a towel on the counter
- Thoroughly whisk in your starter yogurt
- Ladle the mixture into your jars and put the lids on tight
- Put the jars in a cooler and pour 2 quarts of warm water into the cooler
- Keep water in cooler at 120 degrees for 4 hours
- Remove yogurt from cooler and refrigerate
At this point you have yogurt that is ready to eat.
However if you want a thicker yogurt like a greek yogurt (especially if using raw milk, which tends to make a thinner consistency) then continue on doing this:
- Let yogurt refrigerate overnight in the jars
- Strain all but 1.5 cups yogurt through a fine cloth to release the whey (I have to do this in batches and it usually takes a few hours)
- Whisk the 1.5 cup of thinner yogurt into the thicker yogurt to end up with a perfect creamy textured yogurt.
- Spoon yogurt into jars, put lids on and refrigerate.
