Making Homemade Yogurt

July 22nd, 2010 by Diana Vergis Vinh

I keep saying that making your own yogurt is really easy and some of you have asked how I do it.

Here are the simple steps:

You can use milk from the store or milk from your animals. If you use fresh milk from your goat or cow, then I do think it’s a good idea to pasteurize it. I know there’s a ton of debate about this but personally I like to be sure that my yogurt is going to be safe for everyone.

Step one: Heat the milk

Bring the milk up to 110 degrees farenheit. If it’s too hot it will kill the live yogurt culture. If it’s too cold then the cultures won’t grow properly.

Step two: Check temperature and remove from heat when it reaches 110 degrees.

Once the milk is at the right temperature it’s time to put it in a jar and add a couple of tablespoons of live yogurt culture. I use store bought yogurt instead of buying the freeze-dried starter cultures. I have found that the whole milk yogurt seems to give a thicker final product.

Shake the jar to distribute the yogurt culture throughout the warm milk then put it in a place where the temperature will remain at about 100 degrees farenheit for the next twelve hours. Putting the jar into a cooler with a jar of really hot water then putting the lid on keeps it at the right temperature.

Step three: Place the soon to be yogurt in a cooler next to a bottle of hot water.

After twelve hours, take the jar out and you should have a lovely, creamy yogurt. As homemade yogurt doesn’t have pectin it will be a bit thinner than the store-bought version but the taste is wonderful.

Step four: Enjoy! This is goatie girl yogurt with homemade raspberry jam.

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Bill says:

July 22, 2010 at 7:39 pm

I agree – making yogurt is incredibly easy. I make 3 – 4 quarts every couple of days or so. And a couple of tips here may improve the resulting yogurt:

1. I use a Waring Pro yogurt maker and have never had a failure – and I have made dozens and dozens of gallons of yogurt since I got it this year.

2. Add a cup of dry powdered non-fat milk for each quart – especially if you are starting with non-fat liquid milk. I always use some dry milk with each batch and it comes out much thicker that way.

3. I use a blender – no, not a Waring blender but a Ninja Master Prep unit to blend the culture with the milk. Remember, the culture contains literally billions upon billions of bacteria that you are trying to disperse throughout the milk… so blending for 10 seconds or so ensures that will happen.

I personally heat the milk with the powdered dry milk in it to 190F and add a 50 – 50 mix of sugar and Splenda – about a tablespoon or so per quart – and a pinch of salt for the whole batch.

Usually we use Activia as the culture but we also have tried many different cultures – you can find them on our website: http://mryogurt.info/

Bill and Charlene