Yogurt! Homemade yogurt! Free homemade yogurt!

I was talking to my sister on the phone yesterday, telling her about my Acme shopping trip. I perhaps mentioned that I didn't need any more cereal, as I had I think 26 boxes before I bought six more, but that I wanted the two gallons of free milk. I also perhaps may have mentioned that I don't drink milk. She laughed at me. You have 31 boxes of cereal and don't drink milk. Oh, well, when you put it that way it is true that I sound just a little crazy.

However! There was a plan! Mr 3 would, if allowed, happily live on a diet of breakfast cereal and yogurt. We go through so much yogurt around here! I bought thirty 6 oz containers of yogurt ten days ago, and they are all gone, and that is with me limiting the amount of yogurt he eats daily. Even with some good sales and coupons, I think those 30 cups of yogurt cost me $9. For six boxes of cereal and two gallons of milk, I paid $3.38, and the milk itself was free with the purchase of the cereal. With two gallons of milk I could make 16 lbs of yogurt, or the equivalent of 42 containers ($12.60 worth on sale, $34-$40 worth if you're paying retail) of yogurt, for free. So I wanted to try making my own. If it didn't work, I figured I could freeze the milk and use it for baking.

Well, I started up a batch of yogurt last night, and it worked! We have homemade yogurt! And it was so easy, too.




I basically followed the crockpot recipe detailed on this page, except for a few things. The crockpot recipe there doesn't go into any of the actual mechanics of yogurt making. First, you have to heat the milk to 180°F+ to kill any bacteria which would compete with the active cultures, and to denature the milk protein. Then you cool it to around 115, add in the yogurt or starter culture, and hold it at 110 for at least four hours. I have a probe thermometer so I put the crockpot on high and set the alarm to beep when it reached 180. Much easier and more precise than setting it on low and waiting three hours. What if your crockpot heats or cools faster or slower than the recipe author's crockpot? You might get the milk too hot, you might not get it hot enough to kill the bacteria, you might stir the starter culture in when it's too hot and kill it, you might keep it too cool for the good bacteria to reproduce.

I added about half a cup of non-fat dry milk, as I read that would make a creamier yogurt. And I added a bit more than the required 1/2 cup of yogurt to start it, because I was afraid it wouldn't work. My fears were groundless. I woke up this morning to a big crock full of yogurt!

It turned out about as thick as commercially available plain yogurt, with a nice acidic taste. Really good stuff! I strained it by putting it onto a tea towel laid in a colander, which I let drip into a bowl, because I like creamier yogurt. About two cups of whey drained off, leaving me with around 7 cups of creamy Greek-style yogurt. (The straining affects the finished amount, which would affect my final cost analysis if I had paid anything for the milk, but since strained Greek yogurt is more expensive anyway, and  since I paid nothing for the milk in the first place, I'm just going to call it even.) I can't decide if I'm going to add some fruit or not. Maybe I'll just drizzle on some honey and some nuts and eat it like that.

I didn't take any pictures at the end of the draining process, since I poured white yogurt off a wet, white tea towel and into a white container. Not all that thrilling.

On the spoon, right out of the crockpot:


At the beginning of the draining process: