YOGURT

Sooooo, you’re tired of buying quarts of yogurt at the grocery store weekly? Or you’ve read about how the heritage yogurt cultures give you more healthy probiotics than anything you can find in the store and want to make some yourself?

Well, you’ve come to the right place!

Helpful tip: Remember to keep a distance of 5 to 6 feet between ferments/culturing foods to avoid cross contamination.

Michael found an amazing website called Positively Probiotic and we promptly ordered several different kinds of starters (sour cream, buttermilk, Crème Fraîche and 2 different strains of yogurt). We’re now making the Icelandic Skyr Yogurt culture which sets up nicely. It is a thermophilic culture. This style of yogurt starter is a heat loving yogurt culture and requires consistent heat.

To make a large batch of yogurt at home (I generally make 6 quarts at a time), you will need either a large crockpot or a large Instant Pot. Of course, you can scale this recipe down to whatever size you wish to make. I just prefer to make yogurt once a week and we eat it every morning for breakfast (after enjoying fried eggs) so we go through a lot of yogurt around here!

You will first need to obtain some culture. You can use a plain, unsweetened yogurt from the store to start your yogurt with BUT if you’re going to go through the work of making your own yogurt, I’d highly suggest getting a heritage (healthier) culture to begin with. Check out what Positively Probiotic has to offer (they have MANY kinds of yogurt strains!) or I’d be happy to share some of our yogurt culture with you for a free-will-donation. :)

OK, so, once you’ve got your starter, you will need to decide what kind of milk to use. I’ve found that the Skyr yogurt strain works really well with skim milk (which you can get from our dairy farm if you give us enough notice so we can save some on separating day) but it works with whole milk too.

You will need: 6 quarts of milk (whole or skim)

Approximately 1 1/2 cups of yogurt culture

Large crockpot or InstantPot

Thermometer (digital works well)

Large towel if using a crockpot

Next, you’ll need to decide on what method you wish to use for making your yogurt. I know some people use an actual yogurt maker (which limits you to making much smaller amounts of yogurt at one time) and some use the oven, a large dehydrator, or an insulated cooler to do the hours-long culturing but the following 2 methods are ones I’ve found to be easier and pretty fool-proof….and who isn’t for easier, right?

First I’ll give instructions for making yogurt with a crockpot….

You have 2 options here, one is faster than the other but requires more effort.

• You can warm the milk to 180 F degrees in a large kettle on the stove and then cool it down quickly by setting the whole kettle in a sink full of cold water and cool to 110 F degrees,

  OR

• You can warm the milk to 180 F degrees right in your crockpot on high speed with the lid on, checking the temp regularly once it gets hotter so as not to get it too hot. Then take the lid off and let it set until it cools to 110 F degrees. You can very carefully remove the inner pot part of the crockpot to let it cool faster if you desire but I just let it cool down on it’s own while I’m busy doing other things around the house.

• Once your milk has reached 180 degrees and cooled back down to 110 (I usually only let it cool to about 115 degrees actually as I add my nice, cold, refrigerated starter and that brings it down the rest of the way where it needs to be), ADD THE YOGURT CULTURE!

• You do NOT need to stir the culture in! But you can if it makes you feel better. I grew up stirring it in until I read that it’s not necessary and so skip that step now and turns out fine.

• Now put the lid on your crockpot.

• Turn it on LOW for about 15 minutes. This will just warm everything up nicely.

• Now turn it OFF.

• Cover the whole thing with a thick bath towel. This will help to maintain the temperature.

• Forget about it for the next 8+ hours!

  • CONGRATULATIONS! You just made yogurt!

• Scoop the yogurt into jars and refrigerate BUT FIRST remember to take out about 1 1/2 cup of yogurt and keep it in a small jar in your refrigerator to be used for culturing your next batch of yogurt.

Now I’ll tell you how to make yogurt an even easier way, using an Instant Pot!

• First, take out the rubbery seal that’s in the Instant Pot lid. That seal tends to hold some interesting flavors that you’re not going to want in your yogurt!

• Pour your milk into your Instant Pot. The size of your I.P. will determine how much you can make at a time.

• Set it to “Sauté”. Set the time for around 25 to 30 minutes and start it up (lid off). Use a thermometer to check the milk temp. after your Instant Pot beeps that it’s done. Your goal is to get the milk to 180F degrees. My Instant Pot is a 6-quart one and I have made yogurt so many times that I know it takes my 6 quarts of very cold milk 35 minutes to get to that temp so I set my machine for 5 minutes, it beeps, then I set it for 30 more minutes for that total of 35. BUT if you have a smaller Instant Pot, your milk will likely reach the 180F degrees much sooner than that.

• Now let the milk set and cool to 110-115ish F degrees.

• Add your culture (no need to stir it).

• Put the lid on (you may wish to take the rubbery seal out if it has smells from other food on it) and find the Yogurt setting on your Instant Pot. Select that, turn your machine on and forget about it for at least 8 hours. I usually let it set even longer than that. It will thicken a bit more once it’s in the fridge too. It will have whey that separates out which you can dump or scoop off to use or discard.

  See? Pretty easy.

  Once finished, scoop into jars or containers and refrigerate AND remember to take out about 1 1/2 cups of yogurt and keep it in a small jar in your refrigerator to be used for culturing your next batch of yogurt.

  
  *GREEK YOGURT LIKE THE STORE OPTION

  Did you know? You can line a colander with a thin cloth/filter (they sell yogurt strainers too) and strain the whey off of your yogurt for several hours (cover and refrigerate) and it’s now called Greek Yogurt and is very similar in texture to the store bought option!! The longer you strain it, the thicker the yogurt gets. Play around with it to see what texture you prefer. The whey can be used for soaking grains, added to things when baking, fed to animals, etc.
  

  *Also, some people like to add unflavored gelatin to the milk with the yogurt culture to make a thicker variation that way but I've never experimented with that yet.

  *One more note…. Research L. Reuteri if you are experiencing tough gut health issues! There are videos on Youtube and a book called “Super Gut” that you might want to check out.

  Have questions? Ask away! ~Cora