How to Make Your Own Yogurt – an Illustrated Approach

After consulting a few choice source materials — Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian and Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking — I began to feel quite confident that I could make my own yogurt. Both say it is easy as pie and making your own yogurt, with live cultures and whatnot, seems like a) one of those hippy-dippy things that went out in the 60s but b) so magical that I had to try it.

So put on your bellbottoms and love beads, roll up your hemp sleeves and follow these amazingly simple instructions. All you will need is about 1 lazy hour, 1 night to sleep, yogurt, a quart of milk, a large pot, a whisk, a ceramic bowl or thick glass jar, a towel, a pilot light or other hot place and a can-do attitude.

1. Buy a quart of milk that you like. Whole milk, naturally, tastes better than skim and I can imagine that a little whole cream in there would make it even better. Ms. Colwin advocates goats milk, I advocate whatever fresh organic milk you can find.

2. Buy some plain yogurt that you like. Since this is going to be your “starter,” along with the milk it is what is going to influence the taste of your yogurt. I’m a fan of the Stonyfield Farm brand though have recently indulged in a passionate love affair with Fage, which has a thick tangy taste that I cannot seem to get enough of.

3. Pour your milk into a big pot and bring to a boil. Easy enough.

4. Once it’s started to simmer, take it off the heat. Pie. I told you.

5. Let it sit for 15 – 25 minutes to cool it down the Correct Warm Temperature. You can find the Correct Warm Temperature the following ways

• With a candy thermometer, when it reads 100 - 115 degrees.
• Sticking your finger in the milk for 10 seconds without pain.
• Timing 20 minutes from the time you’ve taken the milk off the stove. Should be close enough.

6. Add 2 Tablespoons of your starter yogurt to a small bowl. Whisk until fluffy. As fluffy as yogurt can be, anyway, which isn’t very.

7. Whisk a little of the Correct Warm Temperature milk into your bowl of fluffy yogurt.

8. Then, add your starter + milk into the whole pot of milk that’s at the Correct Warm Temperature. Whisk to combine.

9. Pour your almost-yogurt into a thick ceramic bowl. Cover with a lid or saran wrap. Ms. Colwin suggests a large thick glass canning jar instead of a ceramic bowl, but a bowl worked fine for me.

10. Wrap the bowl or jar with a towel. Or blanket. Or tie-dyed wallhanging.

11. Place the wrapped bowl over your hottest pilot light overnight. If you don’t have a pilot light, try a radiator. If you don’t have a hot radiator, maybe try your oven or on top of the freezer (which, counter-intuitively) tends to be hot. If you don’t have a pilot light, radiator, oven, or freezer, you probably shouldn’t be making yogurt.

12. In the morning, be surprised to find that you have a bowl of your very own yogurt.

13. Put your yogurt in the fridge, assuming you have one, to enjoy for the next few days.

I’ve been feeling quite smug about this venture and saved a few bucks on my grocery bill in the process. The sisters didn’t find the yogurt as impressive as I did. Then again they they weren’t the ones magically reproducing live active cultures overnight. My yogurt had a nice, but not incredibly thick, texture and a good tang with a buttery aftertaste. I don’t think it necessarily tasted any better than store-bought yogurt, but it didn’t taste any worse either and you get the added satisfaction that you made it yourself and you know exactly what is in it.

Try this and let me know your how you fare. Of, if you tried it before, I’d love to hear about your successes and failures.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Stovetop & Skillet, Other Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.