Make Your Own Yogurt!

I LOVE yogurt.  But I especially love homemade yogurt.  I found a recipe online somewhere (unfortunately I don't remember where...and the page I printed out doesn't have a web address on it.  Anyhoo...here is how I make my own scrumptious yogurt:

Homemade Yogurt

Milk (I sometimes use whole milk, but this particular time I used 2% milk because I was in crisis mode and that's all I had)  Crisis = making taco soup for dinner and running out of sour cream.  Enough said.

1/4 c Yogurt Culture (for your first batch, just buy a small container of plain yogurt at the store.  After you've made your first batch, you can reserve 1/4 c of the yogurt to be used as your starter for the next batch.)

That's all!  2 ingredients!  Let's get our yogurt-making groove on...

1.  First pour the milk into a stock pot and stick the candy thermometer on the side of the pot.  Turn the heat onto medium.  Heat your oven to 200 degrees.

2.  Heat the milk to 180 degrees.  Or if you are like me, you forget to check it and by the time you do, your thermometer reads 200 degrees instead.  No worries if you've done the same thing...it still turns out like normal.

3.  Once the thermometer reads 180, turn the heat off and let the milk cool back down to 110 degrees.  This usually takes 1/2 hr.  Turn your oven off.

4.  Measure out your starter and whisk into the pan of heated milk.  Some recipes say to put some of the heated milk into a bowl, then whisk the yogurt into the that milk, then to add the milk/starter mixture back to the pan of heated milk.  I didn't do this with this batch and it still turned out fine, so if you're short on time and don't want to wash an extra bowl, just add the starter directly to the heated milk.

5.  Pour your milk/started mixture into a crock pot dish (minus the part you plug in) and place the lid on top.  

6.  Wrap the entire crock and lid with a bath towel and place into the oven.  I know...it's really weird sticking your towel into the oven, but it doesn't ruin your towel...trust me.  

7.  Turn your oven light on. 

8.  Leave the yogurt in your oven overnight.  In the morning, your yogurt should be set and look like this:

9.   Remove from oven and place some of the yogurt into a sieve that has been lined with cheese cloth...and placed over another bowl to catch the whey.  (remember Little Miss Muffet?)  Your yogurt should look like this:

10.  Continue draining off the whey until your yogurt reaches the desired consistency.  I like to drain off as much whey as I can, which makes a Greek Yogurt.  We use greek yogurt in place of sour cream, but also eat it as normal yogurt, adding a bit of strawberry jam and topping with granola.  YUMMO!

You will be left with whey that look like this:

Whey can be used for many things.  For a list of 16 ideas for using your whey click here.

You can also make your own Greek yogurt by buying a container of plain yogurt at the store and simply draining off the whey.  You can read the tutorial here.

Happy Yogurt Making!!