Here is the much anticipated and ridiculously easy recipe!
Ingredients:
--8 cups (half-gallon) of whole milk--pasteurized and homogenized is fine, but do NOT use ultra-pasteurized. I tried 6 cups milk made from skim milk powder and 2 cups 1% milk and it worked out fine but is thinner than store bought yogurt. The site I found this recipe on suggests adding a package of unflavored gelatin to the yogurt when you add the culture to the milk to thicken it but we're fine with thinner yogurt.
--1/2 cup store-bought natural, live/active culture plain yogurt (you need to have a starter. Once you have made your own, you can use that as a starter. Every few batches start again with store bought yogurt as the culture will weaken with time if you always use homemade yogurt for your starter.)
--frozen/fresh fruit for flavoring
--thick bath towel
Directions:
Plug in your crockpot and turn to low. Add an entire half gallon of milk. Cover and cook on low for 2 1/2 hours.
Unplug your crockpot. Leave the cover on, and let it sit for 3 hours.
When 3 hours have passed, scoop out 2 cups of the warmish milk and put it in a bowl. Whisk in 1/2 cup of store-bought live/active culture yogurt. Then dump the bowl contents back into the crockpot. Stir to combine.
Put the lid back on your crockpot. Keep it unplugged, and wrap a heavy bath towel all the way around the crock for insulation.
Go to bed, or let it sit for 8 hours. The longer you let it sit the thicker the yogurt will get but it will also get more tangy as well.
In the morning, the yogurt will have thickened---it's not as thick as store-bought yogurt, but has the consistency of low-fat plain yogurt.
Chill in a plastic container(s) in the refrigerator. Your fresh yogurt will last 7-10 days. Save 1/2 cup as a starter to make a new batch. My batch filled 3 reused 650g yogurt containers plus two small bowls for the boys breakfast.
Add fruit as desired, I added a little sugar but this may not be needed if you bled the fruit with the yogurt instead of cutting up the fruit. Honey can also be used as a sweetener instead of sugar.
Cost of making homemade yogurt:
$1.42 - skim milk powder,
$0.51 - 1% milk
$0.52 - store bought yogurt
Total cost: $2.45 plus whatever fruit you would use to flavor. Approximately $0.82 per 650g container of plain yogurt!!!
A typical fruit yogurt that I buy in the store costs $3.49 for a 650g container.
I tried defrosting the frozen yogurt starter and my yogurt failed. Either I didn't use enough starter or freezing and defrosting yogurt doesn't work as well as the recipe book says. I'll try it again and post the results using more frozen yogurt cubes.
ReplyDeleteI tried defrosting more frozen yogurt cubes and used twice as much. It still did not work so I have now removed that suggestion from the recipe as it has failed for me twice. My suggestion is to use store bought yogurt or homemade yogurt from your previous batch as a culture starter.
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