Homemade Yogurt

If you’ve read more than a handful of my blog posts, you know I love kitchen gadgets and appliances. Some are good, some are amazing!  This Cuisinart yogurt maker is amazing!

This is something that if it broke tomorrow, I would order another one. I took it to MO and made yogurt while there. They loved the yogurt so I got them one and Nicole has been making yogurt.

This is truly all you have to do to have homemade yogurt:

1. Heat about 5 cups of milk (I use whole but 2% should work and you can try all the other variations if you want) to 180º. Because I don’t pay enough attention, mine often heats to 200º and yesterday, it got to 220º and still worked just fine.
2. Turn the burner off and let the pot of milk sit there til it cools down to 110º.
3. Stir in about 1/4 cup of “starter”. This can be storebought plain yogurt the first time but thereafter, save some of your own yogurt and use that for your starter.
4. Pour the milk/starter into the yogurt maker.
5. Push start!

It will go til it’s done and the best part is this:  Once it’s done, the little yogurt maker turns into a fridge so if you’re not there, or if you’re sleeping, and it gets done, it will keep it cold til you’re ready for it.

We like Greek style yogurt so I strain the whey from the yogurt. I use this Bouillon Strainer. It’s expensive and overkill or straining yogurt but I have it and I love it so I use it. 

Nicole has this strainer and it works fine. I have this one and I’m not real happy with it. There’s too much yogurt for too small of a straining area and it doesn’t strain as well. It would work well for smaller amounts of yogurt. Since I have the Bouillon Strainer, and it works great, that’s what I use.

From 5 cups of milk, I end up with about 3 cups of thick, creamy, Greek style yogurt.

This is a pint jar so you can see how much whey strains out. The whey can be left in and that will result in a yogurt that is more runny (but not gross runny) and a bit more tangy. The whey never goes to waste. Here are some of the ways I use it:

1. Add to the water when cooking rice or pasta.
2. Use in place of liquid when making bread.
3. Give to the chickens. This is great in the summer when it’s so hot . . I’ll freeze it til it’s slushy, then dump it into a container for them.
4. Mix with water and pour around tomatoes or other calcium loving veggies.
5. Substitute all or part of the milk or buttermilk with whey in biscuit, pancake or scone batter.

In most any recipe that calls for water, milk or broth, where you think a bit of tangy or sour taste would add to the depth of flavor, substitute whey for all or part of the liquid.

We use the yogurt in place of sour cream on our baked potatoes, tacos, enchiladas and on top of soups where  you would use a dollop of sour cream. In fact, Vince loves sour cream on his baked potato. He hardly uses butter . . mostly just sour cream and he will no longer use sour cream but only wants homemade yogurt on his potatoes.

We mix yogurt with fruit and a little sweetener and stick it in the freezer for about half an hour. We use yogurt in smoothies. I’m making yogurt at least every other day  . .  sometimes every day!