We started making yogurt at home when our oldest was 9 months old, and we haven’t stopped since. Homemade yogurt is waaaay easier than you’d think, and it takes very little time. All you need is some milk and either a couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt, or yogurt starter. A yogurt incubator is helpful too (we got ours at Fred’s for around $20) but it’s not necessary. Here’s a step by step tutorial on how to make your own yogurt.
Another good tutorial and the recipe we use (not to mention a great cooking site) is located here. This “recipe” in a nutshell:
- heat up 4 cups of milk to just before boiling. Stir occasionally. Don’t let it burn – that’s icky.
- take off heat and add 1/3 C. powdered milk.
- Let cool to room temp
- add 1/3 ish cup of plain yogurt (you can use some from your last batch) & mix well
- pour mixture into incubator and plug in for 8-9 hours (or use alternate incubation method, just Google yogurt making)
- Put yogurt in fridge, cool, and eat. Yum!
May 6, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Are you serious?! I totally want to try this, but I am intimidated! Shoot me an e-mail and tell me it tastes as good or better than Brown Cow brand, and I’m in.
May 6, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Correction: I meant Stoneyfield.
May 7, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Ha. We love Stoneyfield too. Tried Brown cow once or twice, but it was just a little wierd for us. I think we’ve gotten close to stoneyfield a few times, but it takes a bunch of just trying it out to perfect your own recipe. In case you do try it out, here are some helps: the shorter the incubation time, the milder the yogurt. You can easily make it vanilla yogurt by adding some vanilla and sugar (a couple of tablespoons?) after the milk has been heated. Adding powdered milk helps to thicken the yogurt. We like adding 1/3-1/2 cup of powder just after taking the milk off the burner. I haven’t tried adding more, so I don’t know if it would continue to help. We always use whole milk., although I have used 2 percent a couple times, and even just powdered once, and it turned out fine. I just read one article yesterday where a guy claimed that holding the milk at at a high temp for longer (up to 30 min.) makes the yogurt thicker too. I haven’t tested that claim. If you end up trying an alternate method of incubation (using a cooler, etc.) let me know how it goes. I’ve been wanting to try it that way, but haven’t gotten up the guts 🙂