The Deliciousness of Homemade Yogurt!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would make homemade yogurt! Well I did and we LOVE it!!! At first I was very leery of the fact that you could make yogurt in your home but I've been making a lot of other things at home so I figured I would give this a try too! In the last 3 weeks we have gone through 7 quarts of it, the best part is you can add anything you like into it and make it your own yogurt!

The first thing you will need is your equipment!
* A large stock pot - big enough to hold your milk.
*glass quart size jars with lids and rims- I found quart canning jars great for this (make sure they are sterilized)
*Milk- any kind from skim to whole. I use 2 % mainly because that's always what we have in the house and on hand when I need to make more yogurt. I make a gallon at a time which converts into 4 quarts which will normally last our house almost 2 weeks!
*Thermometer
*Cooler big that will fit your quart jars
*One 6-8oz good yogurt for starter - I'll explain more later.

Now lets get started!!!
Start to warm your milk, I started to heat mine around medium heat or a '6' on my stove. I stirred it often while it warmed with a whisk. You want to heat it slowly to 190* and when I say slowly it took me almost an hour to heat the milk to this temp. While I was waiting for the milk I made our homemade granola bars (I'll blog about that later!) Anyways heating the milk like this is called scalding the milk, you don't want to boil it though so make sure you keep an eye on it. Once you reach 190* turn down the heat on the stove. You want to maintain cooking the 190* milk for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, it's time to cool the milk back down.

The fastest way to cool the milk is in a sink of cold water. I filled my kitchen sink up and set the pan in it. Check the water temp, once it' starts getting warm remove some and add more cold water. Look at all the pretty steam. When you set your hot pot into the water there is a lot of steam of course, but I found the temperature difference will create a thick layer of milk on the bottom of the pan. Don't worry after about a minute I stirred the milk and was able to remove the layer of milk in one big chunk. It took about 5 minutes to get the milk cooled down.You want it to cool to 120* before adding your starter yogurt.

Once we have the milk cooled to 120*, it's time to add the starter yogurt. The starter yogurt is important. This is something you do not want to buy cheap.You want a higher fat if possible plain or vanilla yogurt with LIVE ACTIVE CULTURES. This is what is going to turn your milk into yogurt.

I used 6 ounces of yogurt to my one gallon of milk. Dump it in and mix it around thoroughly. This is important, you want all the starter yogurt to spread well though the milk. The active cultures needs to mix with the milk to make the yogurt. Once you have made a successful batch of homemade yogurt, you can use that as your starter. Take 6oz out right away, place it in a container and toss it in the freezer. This way you will make sure you have enough to start a new batch. You can do this for a few batches of yogurt. I've read over time that it will lose some of it's potency, and you will have to buy a new starter, but this should make 4-6 more batches before having to buy another little 6oz container.

Now if you want vanilla yogurt, you want to add your ingredients to this step. I made vanilla yogurt since I started with a vanilla starter and the kids really like vanilla. Once my starter was mixed in I add 3/4 cup sugar (we used this for the 1st batch, the second batch we put 1 1/3 cup of sugar, it was better!) and 1.5 TBSP vanilla extract to the milk. You can adjust it to your taste here.

Once everything is mixed to how you want it, It's time to put it in the jars. I've read about people straining their yogurt before putting it into the jars but I never had any clumps in my yogurt so I have never done this. Oh the pouring, here's another tip I used, I poured my milk from the pot into a large measuring cup. This makes it SO much easier to pour into the jars then and less spilling all over the place.

Once you've filled up your jars, you might want to skim off the bubbles. This isn't necessary, but helps with the yogurt's texture. I just took a spoon and scooped them off (The second batch I didn't have any bubbles)

 

Place the lids and rings on them and they are ready to incubate. This is where your cooler comes into play.  Place the jars in there and now add water. This water should be about 120*.You want the water to cover the lids of the jars. Close the cooler and let it sit for 4 hours, I forgot about mine (Whoops!) and left it in there for 5 hours. I left my cooler right in the bath tub, it was one place I didn't think the kids would bother it. Also it made dumping the water out later a lot easier. Where you leave the cooler doesn't matter so much as long as it's a draft free place. So don't place it next to an open window or cold door.

 

Once your time is up you will want to take the yogurt out of the cooler. I seriously looked at the jar when I pulled it out of the cooler and thought. Man all I did was curdle milk! BUT I didn't give up, I took the yogurt straight from the cooler and placed it in the fridge all the way in the back. I let it sit over night to make sure it thickened up.

 

The next day we opened the yogurt up, I still thought I had messed this whole thing up but alas I mixed up the yogurt and it looked like store bought yogurt!!! First we tired just vanilla yogurt, then we started to mix stuff into it. The possibilities are up to you! A1's favorite is mixed with strawberry or blackberry jam. A2 doesn't really care for yogurt at all but I'm determined to have her like some type of yogurt! A3's favorite is having fresh blueberries in there :) R will eat it pretty much anyway and I like to put it in my morning smoothies!! When I make it this weekend I will be trying to make strawberry yogurt!

 

                                                             My Finished Yogurt!