These days, you can’t go anywhere without seeing or hearing about Probiotics. What is it? It’s pretty much some live microorganism (i.e. yeast & bacteria) that can be found in food and your body. You can also get these little guys in a supplement form. They are important in maintaining a healthy balance in your guts by keeping the bad bacteria under control.
I am sure you have seen the pretty lady in green on TV giving you a 14-day challenge. You may have also seen probiotics drinks and breakfast cereals. These could be good yet very expensive food items. If you have money to spend, feel free to pay for such foods to get the best of the friendly bacteria. If you’re like me, always look for ways to challenge yourself and like to keep the greens in the bank, you will want to know how to harvest the benefits of probiotics without the high cost. Here, I am giving you my 14-day challenge to see if you can jump on the probiotics bandwagon, without breaking the bank.
The most common foods in which we can find probiotics are yogurt or a drinkable yogurt called Kefir. And believe it or not, you can make your yogurt at home. It’s a lot easier than you think.
Yogurt making is nothing new. It’s probably dated back to 10,000 years before Jesus was born, somewhere in the Middle East, no one knows for sure. It doesn’t matter when or where it started because all we need to know is that this ancient delicious goodie has served as a food stable and kept our ancestors healthy from the beginning of history.
Some of you may think, if I can buy yogurt why make my own? Sure, you can always go to a grocery store and pick up your favorite yogurt and eat it immediately. That’s convenient, but that’s pretty much the only good thing about store bought yogurt.
You see, yogurt was always a healthy food until the recent years some genius decided to add sugar and other artificial ingredients into it. These days, most yogurt has been turned from super food into a sugar packed dessert! Originally, yogurt only consisted milk and some friendly bacteria. Now, you buy a yogurt in a store and you get a lot more than what you’ve bargained for, in a not-so-good way.
No Surprise Ingredients
Just to prove my point, I picked up a small cup of Lucerne low fat, fruit on the bottom, yogurt and looked at the ingredients. What’s in it? Let’s see…
Milk ingredients, Strawberry Banana Base (Sugar, Water, Strawberries, Banana puree, Modified Starch, Natural Flavour, Potassium Sorbate, Colour), Water, Modified Corn Starch, Modified Milk Ingredients, Gelatin, Carrageenan, Active Bacterial Cultures.
Milk ingredients? What does that mean? Why not just “milk”? If that’s not strange enough, look further down you will see “Modified Milk Ingredients”?? And what the heck is “Modified Corn Starch”? I know cornstarch is a type of starch made from the maize grains. According to Harold McGee, an American author who writes about chemistry, technique and history of food and cooking, modified cornstarch has either been made from corn that is purposely bred to yield a grain that will result in a more reliable form of cornstarch, or that the cornstarch has been treated possibly with chemicals to alter the structure of the molecule to make it an even better thickener. Do you want some chemicals in your food? I know I don't! Imagine you went to a restaurant to order a steak and the waiter asked “Would you like your steak modified?”
What about Carrageenan? London South Bank University, on one of their “Water Structure and Science” sites describes Carrageenan as a alkaline elimination from v-carrageen, an isolated from mostly the Philippines seaweeds Spinosum. They are mainly used for thickening, suspending and gelling. Yummy! The very same site also noted a health scare concerning degraded Carrageenan has recently been examined by the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food. ECSC did not support the use of Carrageenan in food due to safety issues.
I know, you may not eat Lucerne yogurt so it‘s not your concern. Your favorite yogurt probably is better than this sugary junk. Maybe so, but by how much? I used to eat a lesser evil (so I thought) and I still have some plastic containers in my storage: Astro Fat Free Plain Yogurt. I got one container out just to read what I had eaten.
Ingredients: Modified Milk Ingredients, Agar, Pectin, Active Bacterial Cultures. But you don’t eat Astro? OK, let’s look at the one with all the hypes these days, the Activia - Raspberry flavor.
Ingredients: Skim Milk, Cream, Fructose, Concentrated Skim Milk, Raspberries, Milk and Whey Protein Concentrate, Corn Starch, Modified Corn Starch, Gelatin, Active Bacterial Cultures (Bifidobacterium Lactis DN-173 010), Natural and Artificial Flavour, Natural Colour.
As I was writing this blog, Global TV’s 16:9 was, uncannily, airing a program called "Beetlejuice" on food coloring. The show related some severe cases of allergic reactions due to people, especially children, who had eaten food contained bugs that were purposefully added to it for color enhancement. Now under FDA regulations, coloring ingredients that are not extracted from plants and animals, manufacturers have list it to on their label under something like FD&C color #40. Since bugs are considered natural additives, these companies are not required to disclose such ingredients on their food labels. If they do, they may use the terms as "Carmine", “artificial coloring” or simply “added color”. If you want to know more about this topic, read here
By the way, Beetlejuice coloring is nothing new. The producers of 16:9 had questioned Health Canada regarding this matter. They received a letter stating that the government would look into the issue, and guess what? The letter was received 11 years ago.
You see, in order to enhance the colors, flavors and shelf life of a food, sometimes manufacturers add a lot of “extras“ to the supposed to be good food. To me, “Modified” or “added” in food terms means “I’ve done something to it but I don’t want you to know what”.
Now, let’s look at the ingredients of most homemade yogurt: Milk and active bacterial cultures. No surprise there! You really don’t need any cornstarch , gel, bugs or questionable ingredients to give you the best health benefits.
Superior Freshness
I don’t have to explain this one because nothing is as fresh as make-then-eat-it. The store stuff… well, depends on how long ago was the yogurt made and how long it had sat in the storehouse fridge and, of course, how long it took the truck to deliver the food to the store before you went to pick it up. And yea, did you eat it upon purchase. Also, if you are like me, prefer plain, non-fat yogurt over the sweetened stuff, you probably won’t find them in the 100-g serving cups. You will have to buy larger quantity between 650 - 750 grams in one tub. Again, the larger the quantity the longer it will take to finish and the less fresh it will be as you get to the bottom of it.
I make my yogurt every 3 days or so. Once I am down to the last few tablespoons I use what’s left as a starter (that’s where the active bacterial cultures come from) to make another batch. Make it, chill it, then eat it. As fresh as it can be!
Better Taste
Ask anyone who makes yogurt and they will tell you homemade yogurt tastes much better than the store bought stuff. That’s only one of the reasons I made my own yogurt. My husband likes raspberry flavored yogurt while my son likes vanilla, and of course I like it plain. If we were buying yogurt from the store, we would have three different kinds of yogurt in our fridge. The beauty of making your own yogurt is that, you can make it plain then flavor it however way you like it. You decide how sweet, how tart, how thick of your yogurt is, and what kind of fruit in it. When you buy it from a store, someone else gets to decide all that for you.
Lower Cost
Yes, it’s a big deal to us because we eat a lot of yogurt. I eat 750 grams of yogurt by myself in three days; my husband and son don‘t eat less… can you imagine how much money we would have to pay just to buy enough yogurt for the three of us?
The Astro plain yogurt I used to buy was over $3 for 750 g. I don’t buy Activia or anything else but based on this week Co-Op’s flyer, the big one, 650-g is on sale for $3.49 and the small individual cups 8 x 100-g is also on sale for $4.99. The Stoneyfield 650-g on sale for $3.99 and their 8 x 100-g package is $5.99. If these are sale prices, I can’t imagine how much more you have to pay when you have pay full price.
As for my yogurt, I use 4 cups of milk (that’s ¼ of a gallon) and some leftover yogurt as starter. If I use skim or 1% milk I add 1/3 cup of powdered milk because I like a thicker texture. I pay a bit over $4 for a gallon (16 cups) of milk, that works out to a bit over $1 for each batch that weighs almost 1 kg. The powdered milk, cost next to nothing. The leftover cultures, practically nothing. I don’t how much you pay for a gallon of milk so I will let you do the math to see how much you can save.
By the way, you can make your own yogurt using almost any milk of your choice. Do you know how much you have to pay if you want 650 g of organic yogurt with probiotics in it? What about if you are allergic to cow’s milk and can only use yogurt made from goat’s or soy milk? You can make them at home too, at a fraction of the cost. And yes, if you use good ingredients, your yogurt is as good (if not better) than what Activia or Stoneyfield have to offer.
How to make it?
There are many different ways. Some people use a yogurt maker. Don’t get confused a yogurt maker with a frozen yogurt make (to make ice cream and frozen yogurt). A yogurt maker is simply an unit that uses a temperature sensor to incubate the yogurt mixture you have prepared. Most of the models look like this:
They come with small holders for individual cups. You pour the yogurt mixture into each cup, put them in place, close the lid, plug in the unit and let the machine do the rest.
I have a yogurt maker but I don’t use it because I eat a lot of yogurt and the five little cups are just not enough. And of course, as a homemaking freak, I love the satisfaction from making things from scratch or without any special gadgets.
If you’re like me or just don’t care about a yogurt maker, you can use a heating pad that has various settings to make your yogurt. If you don’t have a heating pad, you can use your oven at home. Other methods including using an Styrofoam cooler, a crock pot, or even just a wide-mouth Thermos.
Since you’re more likely to have an oven and a heating pad, I am going to talk about these two. If you are interested in other methods, simply do a “Google” search on homemade yogurt, there are an ocean of information out there. Or you can contact me for more information.
By the way, the best time to make yogurt is the evening, some time before you go to bed.
A) Heating pad method:
Tools you will need:
1) A large pot
2) A spoon or ladle
3) A wide mouth quart size jar or any glass jar that’s large enough to hold the amount of milk you are going to use. Glass is good because you can check the yogurt without having to open the lid. You need to sterilize the jar so there won’t be any bad bacteria in it; you just want the good guys, right?
4) A candy thermometer
5) A heating pad with various settings i.e. low, medium, and high
6) Some elastic bands
7) A towel or two
Ingredients you will need:
1) Four cups of milk of your choice, from non fat cow’s milk to organic soy milk, you can use whatever you want.
2) Some live bacterial cultures. I recommend cultures from some plain yogurt for beginners. You don’t need a lot of that; 2 to 4 tablespoons is good enough. You can get the live bacteria cultures from leftover yogurt. If you have a friend who makes yogurt just borrow some from him or her. When buying plain yogurt make sure it has live bacterial cultures in it. If you are not sure, read the label on the container. Of course, you can always buy a yogurt starter from a special store but they can be pretty expensive.
3) If you like a thicker yogurt and you are using skim or 1% fat milk, you may consider adding some powdered milk into the mixture, you can use 1/3 - 1/2 cup of powdered milk.
Remember, choose the ingredients as something what you would like to eat, for you will get exactly what you put in it. If you want fat free yogurt, you will need to use fat free milk; organic cultures and milk for organic yogurt etc. By the way, I make my own cultures (yea, I am a real freak) by adding store acidophilus supplement in the milk. Acidophilus is a natural, good bacteria that can be found in your own guts. Like other good bacteria, acidophilus helps to protect your stomach from bad bacteria. It also gives a sweeter taste to the yogurt so I don’t need to add any sweetener when it’s done.
Now that you have everything…
1) Plug in the heating pad, set it to low heating and have the clean jar ready.
2) Get your leftover yogurt out from the fridge (if that’s what you use) and let it sit until room temperature.
3) Heat up the milk in a large pot over low to med heat. If you want to use powdered milk, this is the time to add it into the milk. Stir well. Heat milk to 180F then remove it from the heat immediately. You don‘t want to boil your milk.
When I first started making yogurt I used a candy thermometer but after a while I can tell when the temperature is about right by just looking at it. The milk looks a bit foamy and it’s just about to boil. As soon as you see this, remove the pot from the heat. While cooling the milk, you can choose to add honey or any sweetener and vanilla; stir well and let it cool.
4) When the milk cools to somewhere around 115F - 118F (baby formula temperature), scoop some of the warm milk and add it to the yogurt, stir to break up the lumps. Then pour the mixture back into the pot of milk. Stir a bit more.
5) Immediately pour the whole thing into the clean jar, put the lid on.
6) Wrap the jar with the heating pad, secured with some elastic bands. I place a towel under the jar and over the jar to prevent heat loss.
7) Let it sit in a quiet corner overnight. In the morning, you can unwrap the heating pad and gently tilt the jar. If the yogurt doesn’t move, it’s set. You can eat it immediately but if you are not used to eating warm yogurt you may want to chill it for a few hours before chowing down.
B) The oven method
Tools you will need:
Similar to the heating pad method except you need an oven instead of a heating pad.
Ingredients you will need:
Same as the heating pad method.
1) Pre heat oven to 110F - 115F for 10 minutes. Turn it off and don’t open the door again until the yogurt mixture is ready.
2) Follow the steps listed under the Heating Pad method up to step #four.
3) Place the jar of yogurt mixture on a cookie sheet and put it inside the oven. Close the door and don’t open again until the next morning.
4) If the yogurt is set, chill it in the fridge immediately.
Remember, most yogurt in the right temperature will set between 4 and 6 hours. But sometimes, it takes a bit longer so don’t panic if it’s not done in 6 hours. I would leave it up to 12 hours (the longer incubation time the more tart the yogurt will be). If the milk mixture didn’t “yo” or “gurt” by 12 hours, don’t throw it down the drain. You can use the milk for cooking. We don't waste food here!
If you have a successful batch, congratulations! If you have made plain yogurt you can now add flavors to the yogurt to your taste. The easiest way is to stir in some honey, jam, or anything you want. I like to fold in sliced or pureed fruits into my yogurt for natural sweetness. Don’t stir it too hard because it will thin the yogurt out and it will look like Kefir (unless you like it that way). Be creative and enjoy your success.
What do you do if you can’t finish your yogurt fast enough? You can use it to substitute sour cream in any recipes, or to make yogurt cream cheese for your bagels, if you don’t like bagels, use the cream cheese to make cheesecake. Just don't forget to save some for your next batch.
There, you have it! Once you make your first batch of homemade yogurt, you‘re an official member of the probiotics bandwagon member. Any feedback and opinions? I love to hear from you.
I am sure you have seen the pretty lady in green on TV giving you a 14-day challenge. You may have also seen probiotics drinks and breakfast cereals. These could be good yet very expensive food items. If you have money to spend, feel free to pay for such foods to get the best of the friendly bacteria. If you’re like me, always look for ways to challenge yourself and like to keep the greens in the bank, you will want to know how to harvest the benefits of probiotics without the high cost. Here, I am giving you my 14-day challenge to see if you can jump on the probiotics bandwagon, without breaking the bank.
The most common foods in which we can find probiotics are yogurt or a drinkable yogurt called Kefir. And believe it or not, you can make your yogurt at home. It’s a lot easier than you think.
Yogurt making is nothing new. It’s probably dated back to 10,000 years before Jesus was born, somewhere in the Middle East, no one knows for sure. It doesn’t matter when or where it started because all we need to know is that this ancient delicious goodie has served as a food stable and kept our ancestors healthy from the beginning of history.
Some of you may think, if I can buy yogurt why make my own? Sure, you can always go to a grocery store and pick up your favorite yogurt and eat it immediately. That’s convenient, but that’s pretty much the only good thing about store bought yogurt.
You see, yogurt was always a healthy food until the recent years some genius decided to add sugar and other artificial ingredients into it. These days, most yogurt has been turned from super food into a sugar packed dessert! Originally, yogurt only consisted milk and some friendly bacteria. Now, you buy a yogurt in a store and you get a lot more than what you’ve bargained for, in a not-so-good way.
No Surprise Ingredients
Just to prove my point, I picked up a small cup of Lucerne low fat, fruit on the bottom, yogurt and looked at the ingredients. What’s in it? Let’s see…
Milk ingredients, Strawberry Banana Base (Sugar, Water, Strawberries, Banana puree, Modified Starch, Natural Flavour, Potassium Sorbate, Colour), Water, Modified Corn Starch, Modified Milk Ingredients, Gelatin, Carrageenan, Active Bacterial Cultures.
Milk ingredients? What does that mean? Why not just “milk”? If that’s not strange enough, look further down you will see “Modified Milk Ingredients”?? And what the heck is “Modified Corn Starch”? I know cornstarch is a type of starch made from the maize grains. According to Harold McGee, an American author who writes about chemistry, technique and history of food and cooking, modified cornstarch has either been made from corn that is purposely bred to yield a grain that will result in a more reliable form of cornstarch, or that the cornstarch has been treated possibly with chemicals to alter the structure of the molecule to make it an even better thickener. Do you want some chemicals in your food? I know I don't! Imagine you went to a restaurant to order a steak and the waiter asked “Would you like your steak modified?”
What about Carrageenan? London South Bank University, on one of their “Water Structure and Science” sites describes Carrageenan as a alkaline elimination from v-carrageen, an isolated from mostly the Philippines seaweeds Spinosum. They are mainly used for thickening, suspending and gelling. Yummy! The very same site also noted a health scare concerning degraded Carrageenan has recently been examined by the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food. ECSC did not support the use of Carrageenan in food due to safety issues.
I know, you may not eat Lucerne yogurt so it‘s not your concern. Your favorite yogurt probably is better than this sugary junk. Maybe so, but by how much? I used to eat a lesser evil (so I thought) and I still have some plastic containers in my storage: Astro Fat Free Plain Yogurt. I got one container out just to read what I had eaten.
Ingredients: Modified Milk Ingredients, Agar, Pectin, Active Bacterial Cultures. But you don’t eat Astro? OK, let’s look at the one with all the hypes these days, the Activia - Raspberry flavor.
Ingredients: Skim Milk, Cream, Fructose, Concentrated Skim Milk, Raspberries, Milk and Whey Protein Concentrate, Corn Starch, Modified Corn Starch, Gelatin, Active Bacterial Cultures (Bifidobacterium Lactis DN-173 010), Natural and Artificial Flavour, Natural Colour.
As I was writing this blog, Global TV’s 16:9 was, uncannily, airing a program called "Beetlejuice" on food coloring. The show related some severe cases of allergic reactions due to people, especially children, who had eaten food contained bugs that were purposefully added to it for color enhancement. Now under FDA regulations, coloring ingredients that are not extracted from plants and animals, manufacturers have list it to on their label under something like FD&C color #40. Since bugs are considered natural additives, these companies are not required to disclose such ingredients on their food labels. If they do, they may use the terms as "Carmine", “artificial coloring” or simply “added color”. If you want to know more about this topic, read here
By the way, Beetlejuice coloring is nothing new. The producers of 16:9 had questioned Health Canada regarding this matter. They received a letter stating that the government would look into the issue, and guess what? The letter was received 11 years ago.
You see, in order to enhance the colors, flavors and shelf life of a food, sometimes manufacturers add a lot of “extras“ to the supposed to be good food. To me, “Modified” or “added” in food terms means “I’ve done something to it but I don’t want you to know what”.
Now, let’s look at the ingredients of most homemade yogurt: Milk and active bacterial cultures. No surprise there! You really don’t need any cornstarch , gel, bugs or questionable ingredients to give you the best health benefits.
Superior Freshness
I don’t have to explain this one because nothing is as fresh as make-then-eat-it. The store stuff… well, depends on how long ago was the yogurt made and how long it had sat in the storehouse fridge and, of course, how long it took the truck to deliver the food to the store before you went to pick it up. And yea, did you eat it upon purchase. Also, if you are like me, prefer plain, non-fat yogurt over the sweetened stuff, you probably won’t find them in the 100-g serving cups. You will have to buy larger quantity between 650 - 750 grams in one tub. Again, the larger the quantity the longer it will take to finish and the less fresh it will be as you get to the bottom of it.
I make my yogurt every 3 days or so. Once I am down to the last few tablespoons I use what’s left as a starter (that’s where the active bacterial cultures come from) to make another batch. Make it, chill it, then eat it. As fresh as it can be!
Better Taste
Ask anyone who makes yogurt and they will tell you homemade yogurt tastes much better than the store bought stuff. That’s only one of the reasons I made my own yogurt. My husband likes raspberry flavored yogurt while my son likes vanilla, and of course I like it plain. If we were buying yogurt from the store, we would have three different kinds of yogurt in our fridge. The beauty of making your own yogurt is that, you can make it plain then flavor it however way you like it. You decide how sweet, how tart, how thick of your yogurt is, and what kind of fruit in it. When you buy it from a store, someone else gets to decide all that for you.
Lower Cost
Yes, it’s a big deal to us because we eat a lot of yogurt. I eat 750 grams of yogurt by myself in three days; my husband and son don‘t eat less… can you imagine how much money we would have to pay just to buy enough yogurt for the three of us?
The Astro plain yogurt I used to buy was over $3 for 750 g. I don’t buy Activia or anything else but based on this week Co-Op’s flyer, the big one, 650-g is on sale for $3.49 and the small individual cups 8 x 100-g is also on sale for $4.99. The Stoneyfield 650-g on sale for $3.99 and their 8 x 100-g package is $5.99. If these are sale prices, I can’t imagine how much more you have to pay when you have pay full price.
As for my yogurt, I use 4 cups of milk (that’s ¼ of a gallon) and some leftover yogurt as starter. If I use skim or 1% milk I add 1/3 cup of powdered milk because I like a thicker texture. I pay a bit over $4 for a gallon (16 cups) of milk, that works out to a bit over $1 for each batch that weighs almost 1 kg. The powdered milk, cost next to nothing. The leftover cultures, practically nothing. I don’t how much you pay for a gallon of milk so I will let you do the math to see how much you can save.
By the way, you can make your own yogurt using almost any milk of your choice. Do you know how much you have to pay if you want 650 g of organic yogurt with probiotics in it? What about if you are allergic to cow’s milk and can only use yogurt made from goat’s or soy milk? You can make them at home too, at a fraction of the cost. And yes, if you use good ingredients, your yogurt is as good (if not better) than what Activia or Stoneyfield have to offer.
How to make it?
There are many different ways. Some people use a yogurt maker. Don’t get confused a yogurt maker with a frozen yogurt make (to make ice cream and frozen yogurt). A yogurt maker is simply an unit that uses a temperature sensor to incubate the yogurt mixture you have prepared. Most of the models look like this:
They come with small holders for individual cups. You pour the yogurt mixture into each cup, put them in place, close the lid, plug in the unit and let the machine do the rest.
I have a yogurt maker but I don’t use it because I eat a lot of yogurt and the five little cups are just not enough. And of course, as a homemaking freak, I love the satisfaction from making things from scratch or without any special gadgets.
If you’re like me or just don’t care about a yogurt maker, you can use a heating pad that has various settings to make your yogurt. If you don’t have a heating pad, you can use your oven at home. Other methods including using an Styrofoam cooler, a crock pot, or even just a wide-mouth Thermos.
Since you’re more likely to have an oven and a heating pad, I am going to talk about these two. If you are interested in other methods, simply do a “Google” search on homemade yogurt, there are an ocean of information out there. Or you can contact me for more information.
By the way, the best time to make yogurt is the evening, some time before you go to bed.
A) Heating pad method:
Tools you will need:
1) A large pot
2) A spoon or ladle
3) A wide mouth quart size jar or any glass jar that’s large enough to hold the amount of milk you are going to use. Glass is good because you can check the yogurt without having to open the lid. You need to sterilize the jar so there won’t be any bad bacteria in it; you just want the good guys, right?
4) A candy thermometer
5) A heating pad with various settings i.e. low, medium, and high
6) Some elastic bands
7) A towel or two
Ingredients you will need:
1) Four cups of milk of your choice, from non fat cow’s milk to organic soy milk, you can use whatever you want.
2) Some live bacterial cultures. I recommend cultures from some plain yogurt for beginners. You don’t need a lot of that; 2 to 4 tablespoons is good enough. You can get the live bacteria cultures from leftover yogurt. If you have a friend who makes yogurt just borrow some from him or her. When buying plain yogurt make sure it has live bacterial cultures in it. If you are not sure, read the label on the container. Of course, you can always buy a yogurt starter from a special store but they can be pretty expensive.
3) If you like a thicker yogurt and you are using skim or 1% fat milk, you may consider adding some powdered milk into the mixture, you can use 1/3 - 1/2 cup of powdered milk.
Remember, choose the ingredients as something what you would like to eat, for you will get exactly what you put in it. If you want fat free yogurt, you will need to use fat free milk; organic cultures and milk for organic yogurt etc. By the way, I make my own cultures (yea, I am a real freak) by adding store acidophilus supplement in the milk. Acidophilus is a natural, good bacteria that can be found in your own guts. Like other good bacteria, acidophilus helps to protect your stomach from bad bacteria. It also gives a sweeter taste to the yogurt so I don’t need to add any sweetener when it’s done.
Now that you have everything…
1) Plug in the heating pad, set it to low heating and have the clean jar ready.
2) Get your leftover yogurt out from the fridge (if that’s what you use) and let it sit until room temperature.
3) Heat up the milk in a large pot over low to med heat. If you want to use powdered milk, this is the time to add it into the milk. Stir well. Heat milk to 180F then remove it from the heat immediately. You don‘t want to boil your milk.
When I first started making yogurt I used a candy thermometer but after a while I can tell when the temperature is about right by just looking at it. The milk looks a bit foamy and it’s just about to boil. As soon as you see this, remove the pot from the heat. While cooling the milk, you can choose to add honey or any sweetener and vanilla; stir well and let it cool.
4) When the milk cools to somewhere around 115F - 118F (baby formula temperature), scoop some of the warm milk and add it to the yogurt, stir to break up the lumps. Then pour the mixture back into the pot of milk. Stir a bit more.
5) Immediately pour the whole thing into the clean jar, put the lid on.
6) Wrap the jar with the heating pad, secured with some elastic bands. I place a towel under the jar and over the jar to prevent heat loss.
7) Let it sit in a quiet corner overnight. In the morning, you can unwrap the heating pad and gently tilt the jar. If the yogurt doesn’t move, it’s set. You can eat it immediately but if you are not used to eating warm yogurt you may want to chill it for a few hours before chowing down.
B) The oven method
Tools you will need:
Similar to the heating pad method except you need an oven instead of a heating pad.
Ingredients you will need:
Same as the heating pad method.
1) Pre heat oven to 110F - 115F for 10 minutes. Turn it off and don’t open the door again until the yogurt mixture is ready.
2) Follow the steps listed under the Heating Pad method up to step #four.
3) Place the jar of yogurt mixture on a cookie sheet and put it inside the oven. Close the door and don’t open again until the next morning.
4) If the yogurt is set, chill it in the fridge immediately.
Remember, most yogurt in the right temperature will set between 4 and 6 hours. But sometimes, it takes a bit longer so don’t panic if it’s not done in 6 hours. I would leave it up to 12 hours (the longer incubation time the more tart the yogurt will be). If the milk mixture didn’t “yo” or “gurt” by 12 hours, don’t throw it down the drain. You can use the milk for cooking. We don't waste food here!
If you have a successful batch, congratulations! If you have made plain yogurt you can now add flavors to the yogurt to your taste. The easiest way is to stir in some honey, jam, or anything you want. I like to fold in sliced or pureed fruits into my yogurt for natural sweetness. Don’t stir it too hard because it will thin the yogurt out and it will look like Kefir (unless you like it that way). Be creative and enjoy your success.
What do you do if you can’t finish your yogurt fast enough? You can use it to substitute sour cream in any recipes, or to make yogurt cream cheese for your bagels, if you don’t like bagels, use the cream cheese to make cheesecake. Just don't forget to save some for your next batch.
There, you have it! Once you make your first batch of homemade yogurt, you‘re an official member of the probiotics bandwagon member. Any feedback and opinions? I love to hear from you.
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