Easy-Peasy

As I promised, here is my homemade yogurt recipe. It can be as simple or as fancy as you wish to get. If you want plain yogurt, you only need two ingredients: milk and a good yogurt for a "starter." You must begin with a Starter which has live bacteria to be grown in your milk to turn the whole thing into delicious yogurt.

The below tutorial is for the yogurt I make most often - Vanilla Yogurt. Great alone, or topped with berries, peaches or other fruit of your choice. I love it with granola and strawberries myself. If you freeze your own berries, topping this yogurt with frozen berries helps it keep great until lunch time for your kid's lunch boxes. They help keep the yogurt cold and slowly thaw out in time for lunch break. The best part about making your own yogurt is that it is so FAST and EASY.  The cooking process takes me about 15 minutes.

A note about ingredients ~ the amount of fat content in the milk will determine the thickness of your yogurt. Because of this, I compromise with 2% milk. Most often, I use skim or 1% milk when drinking and cooking, but in this case, the fat is important. If you don't mind a less dense yogurt you may by all means use a lower fat milk, or if you wish you may add even more dry milk than I call for in the below recipe.  Density of the yogurt is also why I choose to add gelatin to my yogurt sometimes (I don't when making plain yogurt or yogurt cheese). More on this at the end of this post.

Tools needed
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Yogurt maker or method to keep yogurt warm for the required time.
Large Pot
Whisk
Sink
Measuring cups / spoons


Vanilla Yogurt
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2L milk (about 8 cups)
5ml / 1 tsp gelatin powder (OPTIONAL) - available in bulk stores
250ml / 1 cup dry milk powder
1 tsp vanilla
125ml / 1/2 cup maple syrup

High quality vanilla, maple syrup, gelatin and dry milk.

50 or 60ml / 1/4 cup plain yogurt for starter (must be with live cultures!)

I like Mapleton's Organic yogurt for a starter. 

Begin with a large pot and your milk.

Pour your milk, into the pot and heat (I use high because my pot is heavy bottomed, but be careful not to burn your milk).If you are using gelatin, add now, while the milk is cold. Sprinkle over the surface of the cold milk.

Standard kitchen thermometer - needs to measure at least 30-100 degrees C.

Use a whisk to stir your milk - to keep it from sticking and browning.

Heat the milk until 82 degrees C.  The purpose of heating already pasturised milk is to kill bateria that may compete with the yogurt cultures. It may seem unnecessary, but the one time I tried to eliminate this step I did not end up with yogurt, just curds and whey! You will need to check frequently as it can heat fairly quickly on some stoves.  Whatever you do, don't leave during this part (or the next part!)





Remove from heat. Immediately put into a sink of ice water - cold water and plenty of ice. Doing this speeds up the process tremendously. This part of the process only takes about 5 minutes.  If you leave to answer the door or phone - or FOR ANY OTHER REASON - your yogurt will cool too much. Ask me how I know this. Done it. Twice. (To remedy that situation, either warm the milk back up again on the stove, or trust your yogurt maker to do so and add an appropriate amount of time to the process).

Stir the milk to help it to cool.

When it is cooling - perhaps 60 degrees, add the dry milk, vanilla and maple syrup. Check the temperature again. When you reach 40-45 degrees, remove the pot from the ice water, and add the yogurt starter. Stir thoroughly. 


Prepare your yogurt maker or method. Frankly, I consider the dependability of a yogurt maker a blessing that more than makes up for the price. However, I found a perfectly good yogurt maker at a thrift store for $2 - so purchasing one needn't be a huge investment. I use the Yogourmet brand yogurt maker because it makes large quantities that work well for my family (and controlling my portions the way *I* like).  I spent about $60 for this, but because I have been using it weekly for three years, it is worth it. Most of the other makers have single cups that you may prefer. I have read about others who use mason jars in their oven with a 100W bulb, a thermos, heating pad or even their crock pot. But you must keep the yogurt mixture warm enough to allow for the growth of good bacteria and not so warm as to kill it - ideally between 40-45 degrees C.  For the Yogourmet unit, preparation means adding warm water to the fill line (about a cup) and plugging it in.

Going in to the maker. Little frothy on top!

Close it up and now you wait. I like to wait 5 hours which I find is a bit thicker, but not too sour. Then, for this quantity, you must refrigerate for 8 hours before consuming. In my other yogurt maker which had individual cups something like this one -(it recommended 4 hours of refrigeration).

This is so delicious, I really can't describe it! The top has the froth from when I whisked the milk (just like the good store bought yogurts do), and the rest is creamy heaven.

Top with fruit, granola, or eat alone!













Gelatin in Yogurt and Other Ramblings
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This is a personal choice. If you are Vegetarian, eat Kosher or it is Haraam then obviously skip it. For the rest of you who are wondering about adding gelatin, consider the reasons gelatin-laden yogurts aren't so hot. For example, Yoplait Source yogurt, which in my opinion isn't really yogurt at all. It contains little more than a tiny amount of non-fat milk, gelatin, Splenda and "flavours" (oh wait, they claim added vitamins!). At 39 calories, you can't really consider it a food and for calcium, one would be much better off drinking a glass of non-fat milk. The gelatin is there to bulk up an inferior product - a diet food. In my case, I add a teaspoon to (2 l of milk) to help thicken a product that hasn't skimped on ingredients, rather the gelatin is adding to them. But if you don't like it - leave it out.  I could suggest that gelatin has health benefits, but at this small amount, it is unlikely that you will be getting enough to enjoy those benefits.