We love yogurt in our family. We use it for more than just a breakfast food. I use yogurt instead of sour cream and mayo for a lot of my recipes. I LOVE making things from scratch. I find myself on the look out for other things I can start making from scratch. The other day I read on BlueBirdBaby's blog about homemade yogurt. I was like, duh! Why haven't I thought of making homemade yogurt before?!? So with my husband's permission I bought a yogurt make from Amazon. If you don't want to buy a yogurt maker you could always use the oven method as well as other types of methods but I prefer the yogurt maker because it has a constant temperature and I can leave it over night.
Homemade Yogurt
42 oz of milk (whole, skim or 2%) or enough milk to fit in the containers you will be using.
6 oz plain yogurt (store bought or homemade yogurt) or 1 oz for every 6 oz of milk.
Wash and dry all of your utensils well. Heat milk to 180F. Remove pot from heat and let cool to 110F. Add in the yogurt to the cooled milk and stir until dissolved completely. Carefully ladle the mixture into your containers. My yogurt maker's directions ask me to put all seven jars in the machine WITHOUT their lids. I covered the jars with the machine's lid and turned on the machine and let it sit for 12 hours. After they were finished I chilled them for a few hours.
It was so exciting to see that firm texture come out of these cute little jars!
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| She got a little carried away with the honey stick |
Amelia insisted on eating out of the jar. She loved the yogurt so much we ended up eating THREE jars today! She kept asking for more. We added some frozen blueberries, a touch of vanilla and raw honey. It was perfect. Now I need to make some of my crunchy GF granola.
Edited 7/6/11 to say that I started using yogurt cultures from Cultures For Health. I bought their reusable heirloom Greek yogurt cultures which means I can use the cultures indefinitely! Yogurt A is used to make yogurt B and yogurt B makes yogurt C and so on! I love the tangy flavor and thickness of the Greek yogurt. I also bought the Bulgarian yogurt culture which they compare to commercial yogurts. I make a new batch of yogurt once a week to keep the cultures strong. They even carry yogurt cultures for making dairy free yogurts as well as Kombucha, kefir, buttermilk, sour cream, and sourdough!
Edited 7/6/11 to say that I started using yogurt cultures from Cultures For Health. I bought their reusable heirloom Greek yogurt cultures which means I can use the cultures indefinitely! Yogurt A is used to make yogurt B and yogurt B makes yogurt C and so on! I love the tangy flavor and thickness of the Greek yogurt. I also bought the Bulgarian yogurt culture which they compare to commercial yogurts. I make a new batch of yogurt once a week to keep the cultures strong. They even carry yogurt cultures for making dairy free yogurts as well as Kombucha, kefir, buttermilk, sour cream, and sourdough!
hmm..is it worth it though? buying a tub of yogurt to make some little jars of yogurt? does it yield more than this? how does that work
ReplyDeleteI feel it is worth it. I had a tub of plain organic yogurt when I first started and saved enough to make a batch of homemade yogurt. From there I reserve one jar of my homemade yogurt to keep making new batches of yogurt. Making your own yogurt is cheaper than buying store bought organic yogurt plus you are able to control the ingredients going into it. A gallon of milk makes a lot of yogurt. I find that this method works well for us. I have seen yogurt makers that use quart mason jars if you were concerned about having enough in the fridge. You can make one quart and put that in the fridge and then make another jar and so on.
ReplyDeleteHope this helps!