Making Yoghurt
Making yoghurt is extremely easy to do, and is an awful lot cheaper than buying it. You just need some milk, and a few tablespoons of store bought yoghurt that has an active bacterial culture. Just read the label and it should say whether or not it does.
Just put some milk in a pot on the stove, and slowly bring it up to 185F to scald it. This re-arranges the proteins in the milk to help make for a thicker yoghurt, and it also re-pasteurizes the milk. Hold it at this temperature for 10 minutes, then let it cool to about 115F. With the lid on, 1-and-one-third litres of milk (a single bag of milk here in Canada) will take about an hour and forty-five minutes to come down to that temperature.
Now just mix 3 or 4 tablespoons of your active yoghurt into the milk. Use a whisk to really get it mixed well - you can see in this video that I did not mix it well enough. But it still turned out fine.
Then you need a means by which to keep it at about 110F for about 4 hours. There are a number of easy ways to do this without a yoghurt making machine. If your oven has a plate-warming setting, that is probably 110F so put the mixture into the oven on that setting. If it does not, then preheat the oven to its lowest setting - probably 170F - and then turn the oven off but leave the oven light on. The light will be enough to keep it warm. In fact, as you see in our video, even if your oven light is burnt out the yoghurt will still turn out fine. Another method we used in the video is to put the mixture into a thermos bottle and leave it overnight. We pre-heated the thermos with boiling water, then put in the mixture when it was at 110F. Worked great!
You can keep your culture going indefinitely - use the last few tablespoons of one batch to make your next batch. You can also experiment with different cultures from different brand names of yoghurt, to see which one you like best.
Comments
New method for Yoghurt
Here is the video for the new method. Enjoy!
A new method already!
No sooner did I get this batch made, than a friend pointed me to a really awesome method on this website. It involves making the yoghurt right in sealed mason jars, in a warm water bath in a cooler. But I adapted it to use a warm water bath in a large 11L stock pot in my preheated oven. I'll do a video once I've done it a few times. But it was really easy. I really love this new method and will use it from now on!
Also to note up front is that 2 bags of milk (2 of the 3) perfectly filled 4 of the 3 cup pasta sauce mason jars right to the top with only a few tablespoons left over! That's Canadian bagged milk by the way - so 3 bags is 4 litres. So 2 is two-and-two-thirds litres.
I started by putting the jars, lids, spoon, whisk and other implements into my pressure canner and bringing it all to 15psi then turning it off. Did that ahead of time.
I put 2 litres of water into the microwave for 9:99. I was guessing, but in my unit it came out pretty close to the required 50C. I'll do a bit of fine tuning of that time to get it down just right.
At the same time I preheated my oven to 170F - it's lowest setting. I left it running until I put in the pot later on.
In a 4 litre pot I slowly brought the milk up to 185F and turned off the heat and left it for 10 minutes. During this time it rose to almost 190F but that is fine. Then I put about 6 inches of cold water into the sink and put the pot in there. I stirred constantly with a sterile spoon (that was in the pressure canner) while monitoring the temp, and took the pot out of the bath at 55C and put it onto the stove (heat still off)
I poured one cup of the hot milk into one of the jars, then added 1 cup of yoghurt starter and whisked it all really well (round handled whisk, rubbed between palms really fast). As per the instructions on that site, I'd just opened a fresh container of active-culture yoghurt. I then made sure the milk in the pot was the required 50C and added the 2 cups of innoculant back into it, and stirred really well with my sterile spoon.
Then 1 by one I removed each jar from the canner, filled it, and capped it. After they were all done, I put them into the (11L) pot, and poured the 2 litres of 50C water in there and put it into the oven, and turned off the oven. I needed more water so I put in more to the MW and heated it to 50C, then added it. That was just about the right amount.
Next time I'll probably have the pot with 4 litres of water already in the oven at the right temperature, and add each jar as I fill it.
I put the lid on and closed the oven, and set the timer for 3 hours.
I love this new method! Total time was maybe 20-30 minutes over 2 hours. Very conducive to making one's own yoghurt.
yoghurt keeps well
I just checked the small bar fridge in the living room and in the back was a jar of yoghurt made about a year ago now, but the 2nd "new method" in the above videos. I have not opened it yet, but looking at it through the glass jar and it appears to be perfectly fine! Which goes to show what a fantastic method this is!