Sunday, March 25, 2012

Homemade Yogurt!

Finally.
After two failed attempts (one that made me quite sick, I might add) we finally pulled off making our own yogurt at home.
Behold~!

About one gallon's worth!


If you want to make your own yogurt at home, there are tons of sources online, but the one I referred to was on Soulemama's post here and all the accompanying comments.

But for a simple rundown (sans photos, gomen!!) this is how we did it:

Materials:

- cast iron pot
- big glass jar
- candy thermometer
- milk (2% in our case)
- store-bought plain yogurt (has to have live cultures in it)
- space heater

Directions:

1) clean the big jar and scoop 1 cup of the store-bought yogurt and plop into the bottom of the jar

2) heat the milk over medium heat until it reaches 180 degrees F

3) once milk reaches 180 degrees, remove from heat, and allow to cool down to 110 degrees F

4) pour the heated-then-cooled milk into the jar

5) whisk it around a bit to mix with the store-bought yogurt at the bottom

6) place near the space heater in a way that keeps the heat rather contained (Dash made our table into a kotatsu, so the space heater underneath the heavy blanket made a rather effective incubator)

7) leave there for 8 hours

8) after the 8 hours are up, stick it in the fridge to cool to usual yogurt-eating temperature

9) enjoy!!


Now that we've been successful once, I am confident that this is the way we are gonna go from now on (using the last bit of our homemade batch as the starter yogurt for next time so as to completely eliminate the need to buy store-bought again). It is very cost-effective and you reduce the amount of plastic in your life. That's hitting two birds with one stone!

Maybe I'll take photos next time because it can be very grueling sitting there by the oven with the thermometer in the pot waiting for the mercury to rise up to 180 F -- there are many visual cues to alert you as to when you are nearing the correct temperature. Hopefully I can capture that on camera next time ;)

Well!
Best of luck to all your DIY adventures and Happy Yogurt Making!!

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