MST #3: Homemade Yogurt!

I think it's time for another money saving tip. Ya? Well, I've been looking up a lot of homemade tips and tricks online and one that I've really wanted to try is homemade yogurt. We eat a lot of yogurt in this house and so it can add up pretty quickly. However, as it turns out, making homemade yogurt is super easy and can open up a whole world of other fun things to make-- like homemade yogurt cheese (nearly the same thing as cream cheese) and then ricotta cheese. Oh heavens. This can quickly turn into an all day affair. :)

So anyway, I finally broke down and plunged in to the yogurt making world, and it's not bad at all! Granted, it doesn't taste just like the yogurt in the store, but it's more healthy for you and definitely less expensive. So here is a peek into my yogurt making process:

Cast of Characters:

-1 quart milk (I used 2%)

-1/2 cup powdered milk

-1 to 2 Tbsp honey

-1/2 cup plain yogurt, room temperature

*Okay, some background info on our ingredients... when picking your milk, if you're going for nutritional value as well, you want to pick something in an opaque container since the nutrients in milk are light sensitive. We use the powdered milk to help add some more protein as well. The honey is just to help take the edge off the tanginess and sweeten it up a bit, but can be done without. And then there's the yogurt. The yogurt is the key here. When choosing a plain yogurt, you need to make sure that there are LIVE cultures in it. Not all yogurt has them. It will say somewhere on the carton if they are live or not. If you don't have live cultures in the yogurt this process will not work.

Okay, and away we go...

1. Pour milk into a saucepan.

2. Add the powdered milk

3. And the honey

I ran out of honey and so I just added another Tbsp of Agave (ask me sometime about the health benefits of agave vs. sugar or honey).

4. Whisk it all together over medium heat.

5. At this point you may want to set out your half cup of plain yogurt to start coming to room temperature (that's what's in the bowl). Meanwhile we want to be bringing the milk mixture up to 120 degrees F. (This is a great time to use a probe thermometer if you have one. If not, any thermometer will basically do. Just make sure it's not resting on the bottom of the pan, otherwise you will get the temperature of the pan instead of the milk.)

6. Once you've reached 120 degrees (oops, I got mine a little hot), remove the milk from the heat.

7. Take a 1/2 cup of the milk mixture and stir it in to your yogurt that has been coming to room temperature. (You need the yogurt at room temperature so that the bacteria cultures will "come to life").

8. Add the yogurt back into the milk mixture and stir it up.

9. Pour the mixture into CLEAN containers. (Clean them with hot, soapy water prior to starting this so that you know they are bacteria-free).

10. Seal it up with a lid.

11. Now here's the trick. The yogurt needs to stay incubated for anywhere from 3-12 hours (I do mine for 6 hrs) at a temperature as close to 115 degrees as possible. Anything lower than 110 degrees and the cultures will fall asleep, anything higher than 120 degrees and the cultures will die. A good way to do this is to wrap the jar in a cloth and stick it in an insulated thermos and just leave it there. Other options include lining a cooler with towels and packing the jar(s) in and putting towels all around them, then closing the cooler. Or you can get a heating pad to line a bucket and stick your container in there with the heating pad set to medium heat. Any of these should give you a good result.

12. Close your container and set it aside until the allotted amount of time has passed (the longer you let it sit, the 'tangier' it will become)...

13. And then... Ta-da! Yogurt! You can't really tell in the picture, but it is now a yogurt texture. Let it refrigerate overnight before eating.

14. There are multiple ways to flavor your yogurt, but I just add some jam preserves (you can do sugar-free) of whatever flavor I'm in the mood for. For vanilla yogurt, just add a small amount of vanilla extract (about 1/4 tsp for a regular bowl) and a small amount of sugar (about 1/2 - 1 Tbsp per bowl). Vanilla with some fruit on top is my personal favorite. :)

And how does it taste??

Oh. Oops! He's just kidding. It's really more like this:

:) Like I said, it's not the exact same as yogurt from the store (although vanilla tastes pretty much the same), but it's good! So go give it a try and save yourself some green. You'll be happy you did. :)

Also, I believe you can make this with only powdered milk (I'll have to give it a try soon and report back), and use cultures that come in a package and in that case, you would have totally shelf stable ingredients to make this homemade yogurt in your food storage recipes.

AND, if you leave it plain, you can substitute this for sour cream in pretty much any recipe. So there you have it... sour cream for your food storage as well! Wahoo!

And FINALLY, the coolest part about this? Once you have made a batch, you can simply reserve a half cup of your new, plain yogurt and set it aside to make a future batch. You don't have to buy a new thing of yogurt from the store! Isn't that awesome?! Well, I think it's awesome. :) The yogurt will be good for about 10 days in the fridge, so you'd just have to make another batch by that time to keep the cycle going.

Happy Eatings!

P.S. If you would like to watch a video of this process, Alton Brown (from Food Network's 'Good Eats') has a good one that I followed. Click HERE for part 1 and HERE for part 2 where he also walks you through making yogurt cheese!