Yogurt

Warning: Once you make your own yogurt you will never be able to go back to commercially prepared yogurt. Contrary to popular belief, homemade yogurt is simple. If you can boil milk, you can make yogurt. This recipe makes 2 litres of yogurt. Yogurt will keep for at least 3 weeks. You can make half the recipe.





Preliminary Yogurt-Making Tutorial 

• You can use any kind of fresh milk from skim to 3%. (I use 1%)
• Gelatin? Are you kidding me? It is optional, but the yogurt will be runny with lots of whey sitting on the top. Worse ingredients go into store-bought yogurt, trust me! Besides, gelatin is good for your hair and nails.
• Never, never, NEVER add the yogurt starter to hot milk. You will kill all the bacteria in the starter and the end product will be a large batch of warm milk. (I speak from experience on this one.)
• Yogurt starter - you can buy this at a health food store but I just found it at Superstore in the refrigerated organic food section. Alternatively you can use a small container of store-bought plain yogurt. I've used both. I like the powdered starter better. The results are more consistent as you have no control over how the commercial yogurt has been stored previously to purchasing, hence no guarantee of how many bacteria are still living. You can also save about a 1/2 cup of homemade yogurt to use for a starter on the next batch. If you choose this route, eventually you'll have to stop. It's like making a copy of a copy - it won't last forever.
• Growing the yogurt - you need a warm environment. There are several ways you can accomplish this. If your oven door seals properly, you can pour the yogurt in a glass baking dish (or two) with lids and let it sit in the oven for 8 hours with the oven light on. I purchased a yogurt maker. I'm very happy with it. It makes yogurt in 4 to 4 1/2 hours. I have a friend who wraps her yogurt in an electric blanket. Interesting.

Ingredients

2 L milk
1 1/2 cups skim milk powder
1 package unflavoured gelatin
2 packages yogurt starter


Instructions

1. Pour milk into a pot. Whisk in skim milk powder.
2. Dissolve gelatin in a little bit of milk and add it to the pot.
3. Heat the milk until it just starts to boil. You will have to stir it constantly or it will burn on the bottom. If you have a low quality pot, it might burn despite the constant stirring. You can avoid this by using a double boiler or visiting my mom. She has a good pot and a gas stove top. My milk doesn't burn at her place!
4. Place the pot of boiled milk in a sink of cold water to cool it to 42-44 degrees. This will take about 10 minutes.
5. Dissolve yogurt starter in about 1/2 cup of the cooled milk and then stir it back into the rest of the milk.
6. Pour it into the yogurt maker, glass dishes or ...the electric blanket. I'm assuming it goes into a dish before going into the blanket. Let it incubate as described above.
7. To serve, it can be sweetened with Splenda, honey or flavoured syrup. Regular sugar won't dissolve properly. You can add vanilla, fresh or frozen berries, jam, granola, etc. Be creative. You can use it unsweetened in recipes that call for sour cream or plain yogurt.

Yogurt starter - available at health food stores and some grocery stores in the refrigerated organic food section 

This is my yogurt maker. I purchased it from greenhealthcanada.