This week I successfully made yogurt at home. I’m really blown away that it worked!

Packing school lunches several times a week got me thinking about how much the kids love yogurt, but bemoaning how expensive it is. One solution was to use my strawberry jam mixed with plain yogurt scooped from the large containers into individual serving reusable plastic containers. A quick look online however gave me an even easier and cheaper solution though… make my own yogurt!

And so I found these easy and detailed instructions from a professor at a university in Ohio. They are step-by-step… with pictures even! He doesn’t use any special equipment, but items you probably already have at home. Best of all, the recipe makes 4 quarts at once and he says they will keep up to two months in the refrigerator. That’s a win-win situation to me!

I’ve only waited this long to try it because I didn’t have the proper size of an ice chest (maybe you call it a cooler?) in which to ferment the yogurt once it’s in the jars. He suggests a medium size one, but the most necessary requirement is that it fit 4 quart jars side by side. I’m using canning quart jars, and for months I was unable to find something with a wide enough base on the inside to accomodate them. Summer weather demands new products though and I finally found the Igloo Ice Cube 14. It is just perfect! And the price was – here in Canada – only $19.99.

His directions were easy to understand and follow. He recommends using Dannon brand yogurt for the starter, but I used Astro 3.2% that is readily available here in Canada. One minor detail that sent me off to the store for another tub of starter was to NOT open the tub at all until you are making the yogurt. Someone had wanted a snack for the first tub I bought, and I didn’t want to take chances on my first go at this.

Other minor notes… I used whole milk and added the 4T of powdered milk he recommends if desired for extra firmness and am pleased. On step 7 and 8, when the pot of scalded milk is cooling in a pan, I opened the cold water tap just a bit, so that there was a small stream of cold water entering the pan. See, the pot was so hot that the water in the pan got warmer and the milk didn’t seem to be cooling off. But adding in cold water slowly from the faucet continuously displaced the hot water, and everything was good.

The only hard part was watching the temperature at every stage. It is crucial, but the whole process didn’t take much more than an hour. After that, the yogurt sits in the ice chest for three hours to ferment. Overall, not much effort for the results you get. The ice chest will probably pay for itself after two batches, and the health benefits are incalculable. I think I’ll keep this up from now on. Especially since the truly hardest part was not peaking at it! lol

Makes me wonder now if I can make my own frozen yogurt at home or frozen yogurt popsicles. Hmm…

***Update***
Haven’t gotten around to those popsicles, but I have made my second batch of yogurt. I’m very happy to report that it was even better than the last. Before we ate any out of the the fourth and last jar of the first batch, I scooped and saved one cup to use as starter for the next go ’round. The result was even firmer yogurt with less water. Hurray!

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