Learning how to make yogurt is super easy. Plus, making yogurt at home can be WAY cheaper than buying it, especially if you like those fancy $5/jar yogurts. Just use one fancy jar as your culture, and then make almost a gallon of yogurt from that one jar. It will taste the same as the original expensive yogurt you started with, for only the price of a gallon of milk!
Course Breakfast
Cuisine French
Prep Time 10minutes
Cook Time 20minutes
Total Time 8hours
Servings 4servings
Calories 122kcal
Author Stephanie Stiavetti
Ingredients
3cupswhole milkideally organic
1/4cupplain yogurtI recommend using your local organic brand for freshness and flavor
Instructions
Wash everything that will be coming in contact with your homemade yogurt so that there are no competing bacteria anywhere in your production line. You don't have to be super anal, just clean on a basic level. Heat milk in a saucepan over a medium flame, stirring regularly to prevent a skin from forming. If it does form, just remove it with a spoon. Heat milk until bubbles start to form at the edges and steam begins to rise from the surface - that's 180F if you're using a candy thermometer. This step kills off competing bacteria in the milk.
NOTE: Do not walk away from your milk while it is heating! It only takes a few minutes to heat to 180, and it will quickly boil over, scorching the milk and making an awful mess. Seriously no bueno, especially if you're using expensive organic milk.
Once the milk has reached the proper temperature, remove it from the heat. You want to cool the milk down until it's reached 115F, which is the ideal temperature for culturing. If you're milk's above 120 the cultures will fry, and if it's below 90 nothing will happen. If you don't have a thermometer, the milk is at about 115 when you can comfortably put your finger in it for twenty seconds.
Next, in a separate cup, combine starter yogurt with a few tablespoons of the warm milk. Mix well, and then quickly pour into the rest of the milk. Mix the whole batch until it's completely incorporated, then pour into your yogurt maker of choice. After 8 hours, taste the yogurt, making sure not to agitate it too much lest you anger the fermentation gods. If you'd like it thicker or more tart, by all means incubate it up to another 6 to 7 hours. Bear in mind that too much incubation will cause the protein to completely fall apart and you'll end up with a huge mess of curds and whey, so unless you're Little Miss Muffet, don't push your fermentation much past 12 or 14 hours.
Once your homemade yogurt is done, refrigerate immediately for at least twelve hours before eating. After that, flavor to your heart's content. I like it with local raw honey and a few slices of kiwi. *yogurtgasm*