Make Your Own Yogurt

My husband and I eat a lot of yogurt. First, we started out eating it in single serve cups for lunch. Every time I threw a little cup away, I felt a pang of guilt. We evolved to buying the big 32 ounce tubs so as to use less packaging per serving. We have now reached the final stage of our evolution, making our own!

Initially I thought that making yogurt would require equipment akin to what one might find in a biology lab. After all, this stuff has live cultures in it! I half believed that it was made in some kind of underground controlled facility. How wrong I was. Yogurt is one of the easiest recipes to make. Once it gets going, it makes itself. We make a batch every week in a big glass container, and we are finding that the taste is milder and fresher than anything we ever bought in the store.

Just 6 easy steps away:

1. Everything you need to make your first batch (for the first batch you'll need to start with 1 cup of store bought yogurt for the culture).

2. Pour 4 cups of milk (we use 2% milk) into a pot and heat to 120F

3. Stir half a cup of dry milk powder (non-fat is fine) into milk (it acts as a thickener)

4. Use maple syrup or honey as a sweetener. Anywhere from 2 to 5 tablespoons. For unsweetened yogurt you still need to use 2 tablespoons. It won't taste sweet at all, but it helps the culture develop.

5. In a separate dish, mix 1 cup of reserved already-made yogurt with one cup of the warm milk. Pour the remaining warm milk from the pot into a large container. I prefer to use glass. Finally whisk the milk and yogurt that you have combined into the glass container with the warmed milk. I use a 1.75 quart container, and it has plenty of room.

6. Place the glass container in a cooler with a heating pad tucked around/below it. The goal is to keep the mixture at about 115F (medium on our heating pad). Let the mixture sit for 8-12hrs then refrigerate. Once cold, your yogurt is ready to eat. It's fantastic topped with maple syrup or honey. The only hard part is remembering to save a cup to get the culture going for the next batch!