It’s been a very long time since I pulled out my yogurt maker. In fact, I seem to recall not to long ago wondering if I should pass it on to someone who might actually use it. I didn’t, and this week, as I eyed a surplus of milk, I decided it was time to dust that maker off and give homemade yogurt another try.
In the past, when I’ve made homemade yogurt, I’ve just not been pleased with it. For one, it’s just not as thick as the store bought stuff- I like it nice and thick. It’s also simply plain yogurt. I’m the only one in the house who will eat plain yogurt, everyone else likes it flavored and fruity. And finally, I wasn’t entirely crazy about the process, which called for adding in powdered milk. My taste buds have a powdered milk sensitivity- I can taste it anywhere it’s used, and I really don’t like it. I would make up a quart of homemade yogurt, and on the back of my tongue I could taste that metallic taste that I identify powdered milk with. It’s yucky.
But this time, I was going to skip the powdered milk. I’ve long surmised that if I used a good Greek yogurt as my yogurt starter, that I could skip the powdered milk- which contributes to the thickness of the final product. It was time to test that theory. I started with one quart of good whole milk. This is local, hormone-free milk.
Not organic, but the hormone free part is the part I’m most concerned with. My recipe called a quart of milk, warmed to just below the boiling point, then cooled. I decided to simply warm it enough to take the chill off. I wasn’t sure if scalding played an important part or not. It could be that the scalding part of yogurt making hastens back to the days before pasteurization. You’d want to make sure any baddies in the milk are destroyed before adding live cultures to feed off them and turn them into worse baddies. So I warmed it to lukewarm and then gently, with the rubber spatula, stirred in one container of Greek yogurt.
Apparently there was a run on plain Greek yogurt when I went shopping, because this was the only single-serving container I could find in the grocery store. I could have bought a larger tub of a myriad of brands, but since the plan was to MAKE yogurt, a single serving was what I wanted. This is a great yogurt, so I went with it. My only beef with it was that it was a reduced fat version, normally I prefer full fat.
So I stirred them together, which took quite a while. You have to be careful stirring in the yogurt, because beating destroys the beneficial bacteria apparently. I remember the one time I took a whisk to the yogurt and milk, and my reward at the end was yogurt flavored soup. So it took a while to get the yogurt stirred in, and then I poured it into my yogurt maker.
This maker is really a treasure. When I first bought it, it was on a BOGO sale, so I got two machines for just $20 plus shipping. I passed one on to a friend and kept mine for myself. It’s really no frills- it simply keeps the culturing yogurt at a nice warm temperature, allowing the bacteria to do its thing. Today there are dozens of options out there in the yogurt machine category- many that make individual jars, which is cute, but for me impractical. I like making a quart at a time. I poured the milk/yogurt mixture into my machine and set a timer for six hours. I plugged it in and walked away.
Six hours later, I lifted the top and gave the container a gentle jiggle. I was just looking to see if there was any evidence of the mixture turning into yogurt- and it did jiggle a bit. So without disturbing it, I pulled out the container and set it right into the fridge to chill overnight. The next morning, I opened it up and discovered that I HAD made yogurt successfully! It thickened up nicely actually.
I pulled out a good 1/2 cup to start another batch later this week, and we’ve been enjoying the yogurt ever since. I pulled some out and stirred a touch of vanilla and the tiniest bit of sugar in to layer with jam for the kids. They absolutely loved that- they licked their containers clean- but by stirring something in to the yogurt, it rendered it completely runny. It reminded me very much of the drinkable yogurt that Organic Valley makes. It was delicious, but I really wanted to be able to eat this yogurt with a spoon.
So I’m playing with it. Overall, we’re all happy with the results. One of the biggest reasons I shied away from the homemade yogurt for so long was because I didn’t think the kids would eat it. Now that I know they love it, I suspect this may make a more regular appearance. With all my homemade jams and fruit butters on hand to stir in, we can make a different cup of yogurt every day for three weeks and not have a repeat. The Greek yogurt worked awesome, and I’m eager to see how pulling out my own starter works for a future batch. I think I’ll be doing that tomorrow.