Monday Mission: Homemade Yogurt, the Easy Way

It might sound scary, but making homemade yogurt is quite simple! I’ll give you step-by-step instructions and a yogurt troubleshooting guide to make sure you have yogurt success!

It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure Monday Mission today…Find your yogurt profile below, and take one (maybe two?) step forward.

• I don’t eat yogurt…Your challenge is to try to find some way to eat yogurt that you like! I found that starting with a plain vanilla worked for me. Put your favorite breakfast cereal on top if you have to – the yogurt is even healthier than the milk you’d usually use. Check out the serving suggestions below the recipe for other ways to incorporate yogurt into your meal planning.
• I eat run-of-the-mill sweetened yogurt cups…Try buying a 32 oz. tub of yogurt…you’ll save money and have less packaging waste to recycle.
• I buy big tubs of vanilla yogurt…Move on to plain yogurt, and use fresh or frozen fruit and your own sweetener. You’ll find that you can probably use less total sugar than the presweetened storebought brands. You might even try honey or real maple syrup to avoid refined sugar.
• I use plain yogurt and add fresh fruit…You’re ready to make your own, baby! Move on to the directions…

Yogurt is a foundational Kitchen Stewardship^® recipe because it saves SO much money, improves your nutrition SO much and really is quite easy. (Broth is the first.) I think everyone should make homemade yogurt! You can even make Instant Pot yogurt.

NOTE: Yogurt recipe ideas and 30 other Healthy Snacks to Go recipes now available as an eBook!

If taking real food on the go is a challenge for you, you’re not alone.

Join thousands of other happy owners of Healthy Snacks to Go, an eBook that is helping real foodies everywhere keep their families nourished (and kids happy) even when they need to pack a snack — without resorting to processed junk food or expensive health food store treats.

With over a dozen different “bar” recipes alone, including many that are grain-free and contain zero refined sugar, I guarantee you’ll find a new family favorite in Healthy Snacks to Go.

Why Make Homemade Yogurt?

I’ll bet a lot of people are apprehensive about making homemade yogurt for a variety of reasons:

1. too much time
2. too complicated
3. afraid it won’t work out
4. growing bacteria just sounds scary and dangerous

My job is to dispel all your fears and teach the no dishes, no fuss way to make homemade yogurt. Here’s your motivation:

1. At current prices of $2-6/gallon for milk and $2-4 per 32 oz. tub of plain yogurt, I save $6-14 every time I make a gallon of yogurt, which I do almost every week. That’s over $700 a year off my food budget just by making homemade yogurt, about 1.5 gallons per week. (Yes, we eat it that often.)  More if organic! Click HERE for the breakdown and more budget tips.
2. Nutritionally, I can be totally in charge of the ingredients. No high fructose corn syrup or fake foods for my family. Just the health benefits of yogurt, thank you!
3. Environmentally, I save about 200 32 oz. plastic tubs from going into landfills or being recycled every year.
4. If you compare to the little plastic presweetened cups, the savings are immeasurably greater in every category.
   For example, the last time I read the nutrition facts on a 6 oz. yogurt cup, it contained about 45 grams of sugar. One teaspoon of sugar has 4 grams, and an 8 oz cup of milk has 12. I don’t think I could add enough fruit to make 45, so I guarantee you can cut your sugar intake…significantly…by using plain yogurt!

How Much Time Does It Take to Make Homemade Yogurt?

Grand Total:  15 minutes active work, an hour and a half that you’ll need to be at home.

• 5 minutes to pour milk into jars
• a few minutes over the next 20 minutes to check on the temperature
• a few minutes to move the jars to cool them
• wait an hour and a half or more
• 5 minutes to stir in the starter and put them to incubate
• a few minutes to get the jars in the freezer and then the fridge

How Complicated Is It?

The basic steps:

1. Heat to sterilize the milk. (185 degrees)
2. Cool milk to proper incubation temperature. (90-110 degrees)
3. Add starter yogurt.
4. Incubate at warm temperature 4-24 hours.

**If you have raw milk and want to make raw yogurt, click HERE.

Let’s get started. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but here’s the easiest method, in my opinion. I realize this post looks very long, but it’s just because I want to hold your hand through every step to take the fear out of the process, which is really simple once you read through this and try it once.

Supplies necessary:

• Glass jars (quart wide mouth canning jars or empty mayo or spaghetti sauce jars work great)
• Milk (any, from skim to whole)
• Candy thermometer, but I can show you how to do it without one too
• Pot large enough to hold your glass jars
• 2 Tbs of plain yogurt per quart of milk (Buy the freshest yogurt possible at a store and make sure it has “live and active cultures”. I prefer Dannon. I know it has the three top cultures that I’m looking for to help the gut. The little cups are often on sale for 40-50 cents.)
• picnic cooler
• bath/beach towel
• timer

Prep:

• Run jars and lids through the dishwasher to sterilize. They should be totally dry before capping. I let them air dry completely on top of my toaster oven. If you’re a real baby stepper, just put this step on your to-do list for this week, along with “print and read yogurt directions”. Then NEXT week you can tackle “make yogurt” on a day of your choosing! {As long as your jars have been thoroughly cleaned, absolutely completely dried out, and then capped, I wouldn’t worry too much about the bacteria…but don’t take my word on it.}
• Get out picnic cooler and clean bath towel.

How to Make Homemade Yogurt, the Easy Way

The very first time you make yogurt will take a little more attention because you’ll have to check temperatures to figure out the timing. After that, it’s a piece of cake!

1. Put your sink washcloth in the bottom of the pot. This will prevent the jars from breaking if they start shaking when the water boils (especially if you forget about them). Added bonus: You know how sometimes even after washing your dishrag, it still smells sour? This will knock the stink right out!
2. Pour milk into your jars to about an inch from the top.
3. Place jars into the pot and fill the pot with tap water around the jars.
4. Put a candy thermometer on the edge of the pot. Heat on high until boiling (now your thermometer is sterilized). Sometimes I put a spoon in there too so I know it’s sterile for stirring the yogurt starter in.
5. Move the thermometer into one of the jars; turn heat to medium-low or so, just enough to keep the water boiling.
6. When the milk is at about 185 (you can’t burn it with this method, so if you forget it for a while, it’s OK!) turn off the heat and put lids on the jars.
   The no-thermometer method:  When a “skin” appears on the top, you’re at temp. Just scoop the skin off and throw it in the sink.
7. Remove the jars of milk to cool in the refrigerator on the counter. {I used to cool jars in the fridge, but I realized that it was raising the temp of my fridge, and that’s not good for the rest of my food!} Optional: Take starter yogurt out and let it sit on the counter. This ensures that it’s not too cold when you mix it into the warm milk. You can also cool the milk in a sinkful of cold water with ice or ice packs if you’re in a hurry. It works in about 20-30 minutes with water just halfway up the sides of the jars at my house. {In the winter, I put the jars in my cold garage.}
8. Put a lid on your pot of boiling water and arrange the towel in the cooler so you can put the pot in there without melting anything, then close the lid, towel, and all.
9. Your goal is to get the milk down to about 100 degrees. Incubation happens between 90-120 degrees, so you have decent wiggle room, but 100-112 is optimal. At my house, it takes at least 90 minutes on the counter, 50 minutes in the fridge, 20 in the sink. The first few times you make yogurt, you’ll figure out what your fridge can do. Keep your thermometer sterile and check after about 45 minutes, or leave the thermometer in the jar for the first time only and check at intervals, keeping in mind that opening the fridge will change the temperature in there just a bit, so adjust next time when you simply set the timer. I’ve found that I prefer the thickness of the yogurt better at ~100 degrees.
   No-thermometer method:  You can learn what the jars feel like from the outside. I’ve found that I can’t hold onto the jars with bare hands for more than a few seconds, it’s still too hot. Give it 5-10 more minutes and check again. 118 degrees is the temp at which enzymes and yogurt bacteria die. It’s also the temp at which humans say “ouch!”  God built in a way for us to know when our food is too hot for our health! Another way to check the temp of the milk is to use a clean spoon and drip a bit onto your wrist. You want it to feel warm, but not painful. Remember that your body temperature is about 98, and your goal is approximately 10 degrees higher. If you do have a thermometer, I would recommend the first few times to use it and your wrist so that you know what 110 feels like for future reference.*If you miss and it gets too cold, just heat it up again in the pot on the stove. It’s just milk at this point, so you’re not out anything!
10. Stir in ~2 Tbs. plain yogurt for each quart of milk. Stir gently; remember that you’re dealing with living organisms and you don’t want to knock them senseless! More is not better; too much starter can make bad yogurt. Again, these living organisms need room to reproduce. If you ask too many to live together, it’s like making tenements, and living conditions aren’t as nice for your friendly bacteria!
11. Get those lids on again and nestle your jars in the cooler next to the pot of hot water. Keep them wrapped in one-half of the towel and take the lid off the pot to let the heat out, then close the lid of the cooler to keep the heat in. Keep the cooler still, more or less. Jiggling will affect the consistency of the yogurt. Don’t let the kiddos “cooler-race” in the kitchen! If you have no room in your kitchen, put the cooler in another room and leave yourself a note to remind you when to take the yogurt out.
12. You have to make a call on whether you check your yogurt temp every hour or so (you can add more boiling water to the pot if the temp is getting too low) or just let it go and see what happens. Keep in mind that again, when you open your cooler, you’re affecting the temperature. I would recommend leaving it alone, and as long as your cooler is tough enough to keep the heat in the first time, you will never have to babysit your yogurt. This is NOT rocket science!
13. Incubate 4-24 hours. Shorter incubation makes sweeter yogurt, longer is more tart. Also, lower incubation temperature makes sweeter yogurt and higher makes it more tart. I’ve had good success between 4 and 8. I forgot it once when my goal was 4 hours and found I liked it better at 6. I forgot it once at 6 hours and found that 8 is fine, but I liked 6 better. More recently I read that after incubating a full 24 hours, almost all the lactose is eaten by the bacteria, making the yogurt extremely digestible. I tried leaving one jar for 24 hours, and it wasn’t too bad. I started shooting for about 16 hours for a while, but now since exploring a gluten sensitivity and Crohn’s related issues, all our yogurt incubates for 24 hours. Experiment to see what you prefer!
    Note:  If you incubate longer than 8 hours, I would recommend setting a teapot to boil and pouring the contents into your pot. For 24-hour-yogurt, I add boiling water before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning. I’ve never “checked” on the temp of my yogurt – I prefer to leave it alone – and I’ve had no problems.
14. When the time is up, put the jars into the freezer for about an hour. This improves the texture. No room in the freezer? (I did have a broken jar once when I put it directly into the ice.)  Just go right in the fridge. If you forget the yogurt in the freezer, it’s fine. Yogurt can freeze! Just thaw in your fridge.
    Note:  Don’t get too interested in what it looks like until the yogurt is cold. I have a feeling stirring, and definitely shaking, the jars at this point hurts the process.
15. That’s it! You have created yogurt!

If this post overwhelms you, be sure to check out the Cliff’s notes picture tutorial HERE.

What Does It Look Like?

Most of the time, the finished product will have a yellowish “whey” around the thicker yogurt. This is normal! You can pour it off (into your soup, preferably – there’s protein in that whey!) or stir it in, depending on what consistency you want.

The Easy Clean Up

Lay out your towel to dry and use it for your showers. Air dry your pot and cooler and put them away.  Your only “dishes” include a spoon and a thermometer (maybe). Nice!

When your yogurt is cooled and ready to eat, take out a few Tablespoons for a starter for your next batch. Store it in a clean container and date it (I use a glass baby food jar that has been through the dishwasher). Best practice is to take your starter out first so that it’s the least contaminated by folks dipping out yogurt throughout the week.

I’ve found that I can make a batch every one to two weeks or so and the starter is still plenty strong. I might buy a new starter at the store every two months. If my yogurt starts getting runny, especially twice in a row, I can solve it by buying a new starter.

Serving Suggestions

Breakfast, Lunch and Snacks…We like the plain yogurt at our house with a bit of sugar (about a tsp per serving) or honey and frozen fruit. Yum-O! When I sweeten a whole quart, I use about ¼ c. sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla. Remember to stir gently – if you whip up your yogurt too hard, it will remain runny. Here are some ways I enjoy plain yogurt without any sweeteners.

Sour Cream Sub…Plain Yogurt can substitute in any recipe that calls for sour cream.

Smoothies…Add milk, fresh or frozen fruit, maybe a few ice cubes, and blend. A snack or a dessert! Green smoothies are all the rage right now. I use half yogurt and half milk with the fruit, and my boys think a frozen banana really makes it great!

Bake with it…you can use yogurt instead of milk in biscuits, cornbread, and pancakes. I also just read that you can replace some of the butter or oil in muffin or brownie recipes and all of the fat in cake mixes.

Dips and dressings…Add chopped cucumber and dill weed to plain yogurt and eat as a salad or with grilled meat. I’ll share some more recipes later in the week.

Yogurt definitely keeps well for two weeks, probably longer, but it does get more tart with age.

A Note on Skim vs. Whole Milk

For the first 3 years of my yogurt making, I used skim milk and added powdered dry milk to thicken it up. After doing more research on dairy, I’m pretty convinced that skim milk, which has powdered milk added to it anyway, is pretty bad for you. (Here’s the explanation of that: oxidized cholesterol). However, if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool low-fat/no-fat kind of person and are going to use skim milk, add this step:

At 110 degrees, pour about ¼ cup (just dump some in) nonfat dry milk into each jar. This has 3 purposes:  added protein, added calcium, and it can thicken the finished product a bit.

Added bonus:  if you do choose skim or reduced fat milk for the adults in your family but have a child under two who requires whole milk, you can make different versions at the same time. Just label the top of your jars.

A Note on Organic Milk

Organic yogurt is a great step toward health for your family. Pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, etc. are found in higher concentrations in animal products because the animals eat lots of grains or plant products to produce that one gallon of milk or one pound of meat. When making your own yogurt, however, it’s not recommended to use “ultra-high-temperature” pasteurized milk (UHT), which applies to most organic milk, definitely that sold in cardboard cartons. Here is an explanation of why. If you have the money to buy organic milk, I’d highly recommend looking into getting it from a local farm. See www.realmilk.com for more.

Safety Notes

• Remember that you’re dealing with bacteria here and asking it to multiply on purpose. Be aware of introducing naughty bacteria into your milk/yogurt.
• While the milk is being sterilized, try to keep the inside of the lids out of the air (bacteria-city). I just put them facing each other on the counter.
• If your stirring spoon can come right out of the hot dishwasher, kudos to you. Some people put a spoon into a clean plastic bag when they take it out of the dishwasher if they know they’re making yogurt soon. Or, you can put it in the pot of boiling water and use tongs to get it out.
• Wash your hands well at every step!
• Think about where you set your candy thermometer while the milk is cooling if you need to use it to check for the 110 degrees.

Note:  I have loosened up a lot over the years on my bacteria-consciousness. I still wash my hands before doing each step, but you ought to do that whenever you’re cooking anyway. Just keep things clean and don’t worry. This isn’t rocket science! You’ll know by the smell if the bacteria is wrong in the finished product.

Yogurt Troubleshooting

Why is my Homemade Yogurt Watery?

• Yogurt got too cool while incubating (bacteria inactive)  I’m pretty sure this is not a big deal as long as the yogurt is at the proper temp for at least the first four hours.
• Milk too hot when starter stirred in (bacteria dies)  This one is a deal breaker!
• Stirred too hard when introducing starter
• Weak starter – buy new yogurt at the store
• What to do with failure? There’s nothing wrong with runny yogurt. Stir in some unflavored gelatin (use the coupon KS10 for 10% off!) and use it anyway or be creative with runny half-milk, half-yogurt. Smoothies, anyone? Use it in baking like you would milk, or make cream of vegetable soup. If your yogurt incubated WAY too hot, it’s pretty much just milk. Make hot chocolate and try again tomorrow!

Why is my Homemade Yogurt Grainy?

• This is my most common problem. I really believe the freezer step helps guarantee a creamier consistency. I also think the precise temperature when you stir in the starter may make a difference here, but I haven’t pinpointed exactly how to make perfect yogurt every time. Also make sure you’re not overdoing the amount of starter. Just 2 Tbs! Sometimes just stirring gently will help out with this problem.

Why is my Homemade Yogurt Sour?

• Too much starter
• Incubated too hot or for too long for your taste

Why is my Homemade Yogurt Stinky?

• Introduced bad bacteria into yogurt, then let it multiply. Throw away this batch and be more careful next time!

Why do I Have Slimy Yogurt?

• This can also be from bad bacteria in the yogurt. Throw it away.

Need more help yogurt troubleshooting?

• Remember that there’s an online forum to “ask the teacher” in the Cultured Dairy & Cheese eCourse.
• Complete troubleshooting guide HERE.

Who Should Make Their Own Yogurt?

Best of luck to all of you! I’m convinced that everyone should make homemade yogurt, if you eat it at all. I used to think you had to be an at-home-mom or have time on the weekends, but now that I’ve successfully cultured 24-hour-yogurt, I really think anyone could do it, even if you work all day long. Just start the yogurt while you’re making dinner, add boiling water before bed and in the morning during breakfast, and remove the yogurt after work the next day. You could also just incubate overnight and put in the freezer in the morning. I have accidentally left yogurt in the freezer overnight with no negative repercussions. You can do this! It’s NOT rocket science, it’s just a little food science that anyone who can make chocolate chip cookies (and I barely can do that!) can handle.

You can also make it even easier, incubating on the countertop if you try a Cultures for Health starter.

Yogurt Excuses

I really, truly believe that everyone can and should make their own homemade yogurt. Even if I was really rich and didn’t care a whit about my food budget, I’d probably still make this item homemade, because I can do it better than the factories (nutrition-wise, at the least).

Lots of people are afraid of this one. Here are some common excuses and my straight-up responses:

1. I work all day, and even though yogurt doesn’t take that long to make, the steps are all spread out. I can’t fit it in!
   My response: You have two options to make homemade yogurt fit with your schedule. First, there’s always the weekend. I realize that’s not always possible, because sometimes weekends get awfully full, too. Second, if you start the process when you get home from work – let’s consider you a workaholic and it’s already 7 p.m. – you can put your jars into the cooler by 8:30 if you use the speedy cooling method and 10 p.m. at the latest if you let the milk cool on the counter. Incubate overnight, or even until you get home from work the next day (I prefer 16-20 hours, myself), and stick the jars in the fridge. Ta da! You’re done. Full-time work is no excuse.
2. I’m single/a student/no one in my house eats yogurt except me. I can’t make huge batches and just let it go to waste!
   My response: This method is adaptable to any amount of yogurt that you can fit in a pot. I happen to make 4 jars (just less than a gallon) at a time, but my mom has just started making homemade yogurt using my method (way to go, Mom!) and makes just one jar at a time. You could make two cups if you wanted to. You decide the size and number of your jars. Anyone can make homemade yogurt!
3. I don’t have a picnic cooler, so I can’t use your nifty method to incubate.
   My response: Lots of  people also think they need a yogurt maker to make yogurt, but I think that investment is not worth your money or space in your house. You can incubate yogurt in any place that will stay at about 100 degrees F for 6-24 hours. Many people can use an oven with the light on (check your temperature – mine is probably not warm enough, but others say theirs gets up to 140-150F!). You could also try wrapping the jars in towels with a hot water bottle(s) or even an electric heating pad. Some have had great luck with a slow cooker filled with water and kept on low with the lid off, and a friend of mine simply leaves the jars in her pot of water on the stove. You’ll have to check the temp the first few times you make yogurt, but once you understand the science of growing bacteria you can handle about any situation. Once I incubated yogurt all day in the sun on my back porch, then overnight in a warm car. It made the creamiest raw milk yogurt ever! You do not need fancy equipment to make homemade yogurt.
4. I don’t know where to buy yogurt starter/cultures.
   My response: Trust me, any grocery store has some sort of plain yogurt for sale. Any plain yogurt will do, as long as it lists “live and active cultures” on the side (and I have yet to find one that didn’t). I’ve used Meijer brand, Dannon, and Fage Greek yogurt. If you can only find vanilla, give it a shot! Only fat-free? You’re using whole milk anyway (right???), so the fat free portion of the finished yogurt is so small it’s insignificant. You do not need fancy starters to make homemade yogurt.
5. I use coupons, so I don’t need to make homemade yogurt to save money.
   My response: There are still two other reasons to make your own, and I bet in the long run it will still save you money. First, your family’s nutrition. Incubating your yogurt longer than 4 hours will decrease the milk sugars and increase the probiotics in the final product, which you can’t say about store yogurt. You also will avoid all sweeteners and other junk that might be added to the yogurt cups that are on sale with a coupon. Lastly, your family will eat more yogurt when you have it available in bulk, I guarantee it. More yogurt consumed = a healthier family. The second reason to make your own is to avoid wasting all those little (or big) plastic yogurt tubs. Making homemade achieves that in a big way. You save a lot more than money when you make your own.
6. Will you come to my house and show me how? I think if I see if done just once, I will believe I can do it myself!
   Sure, I can do that…sort of. If you’re a really visual person (or a really nervous one), I will be presenting my method and all my thoughts on and love for homemade yogurt as part of the GNOWFGLINS eCourse on cultured dairy and basic cheesemaking, starting in February. My guest lecture is in March (note to self: tape yogurt making!), and you can access it at any time with any level of membership once it’s posted. You can check out the cultured dairy schedule HERE by scrolling down to the course description and clicking through for more info. As a side note, the “thank you video” for this month features my kids and I making Farmer’s Cheese, an unbelievably simple recipe and very cool science experiment. My kids are hilarious, and Paul had a great time explaining some of the process (trust me, you’ll laugh at his antics).

For more great ideas for the kitchen and balancing your nutrition, budget and earth, see these links:

• Throw Away Less Food
• Connected Meal Planning
• How to Make Homemade Chicken Stock
• Intro to Super Foods Series
• How to Use More Beans

Need More Baby Steps?

Here at Kitchen Stewardship, we’ve always been all about the baby steps. But if you’re just starting your real food and natural living journey, sifting through all that we’ve shared here over the years can be totally overwhelming.

That’s why we took the best 10 rookie “Monday Missions” that used to post once a week and got them all spruced up to send to your inbox – once a week on Mondays, so you can learn to be a kitchen steward one baby step at a time, in a doable sequence.

Yes! One Change a Week please!

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