Success with Homemade Yogurt

I made homemade yogurt again. Last time I made it, it turned great. But I just cooked with it and never got really brave enough to eat the stuff LOL. But, then I ran across this blog post at The Rickett Chronicles. I was inspired again to find a way to sweeten it and add fruit to it so I could really be eating something good for me. Ka-ching! I did it!


This is how I did it:

HOMEMADE YOGURT

1 half gallon 2 percent milk (I used Central Dairy because it is not ultra pasteurized. If it says ultra pasteurized, don't get it. It may fail.)

1/2 cup of store bought plain yogurt. (Freeze the other half for making yogurt another day. You can also use 1/2 cup of the yogurt you make to further make more batches of yogurt. But, every 4 batches or so you need to use the store bought stuff to strengthen your cultures.)

1/3 cup powdered milk

1 candy thermometer

1 cooler (I used one of those insulators for my crockpot because I could zip it up.)

1 large pot to cook in and 1 large pot to sit in the cooler to contain the jars

2 quart canning jars and 1 pint canning jar, all with lids


Pour your milk into a pot. Heat to 180 degrees. Careful not to scorch. I stirred it here and there.
At 180, remove it from the heat. Let this cool down to 110 degrees (any hotter and it will kill your yogurt cultures). This took about 30 minutes.

At 110 degrees, take about a cup of the warm milk and add it to a small bowl with your 1/2 cup of store bought yogurt. Stir well. Then add that back to the big pot of milk. Stir well and also stir in the 1/3 cup of milk powder.

Dump into 2 quart canning jars and one pint canning jar. Place lids on.

Put a clean pot in your cooler/insulator (just for the flat surface). Lay a towel in there or a thick hand towel and then put the pot on top so that the pot is padded by the towel (extra insulation here).

Set the jars of milk (soon to be yogurt) in the pot.

Take some hot water (just from the tap) and poor that around the jars in the pot.

Put the lid on your cooler. Lay another towel over the cooler.

Let this sit for 8 hours.

Take the jars out and tip them sideways. No tipping means you have yogurt. Take a whiff. It smells so clean and glorious!

Now, to eat this for breakfast, I dumped one cup out, sweetened with about 2 Tablespoons of sugar and added some sweetened strawberries (because that's what I had). I ate this with this granola and it was very filling and very good.

I use the plain yogurt in place of sour cream for cooking.

This homemade yogurt seems to last forever. I bet mine lasted 3 or 4 weeks and I just kept cooking with it. (I use it in place of the sour cream in my hashbrown casserole and my family never knows the difference! I'm not telling either!)