We eat yoghurt most nights, so I thought it was time that we made our own.
It’s effectively just soured milk, which is why it’s so often mixed with strong flavours like fruit or toffee – they temper the sour taste in your mouth.
Now after a lot of hunting around online it seems that there is no definitive recipe for home made yoghurt – you just make your milk go off by introducing some ‘culture’ and take it from there. The easiest way to do this is to warm is slightly and then spoon in a pot of live yoghurt you’ve bought from the supermarket.
We used Yeo Valley for no other reason than it being the only ‘live’ one we could find in our local store.
Yeo Valley Yoghurt
Now it struck us as cheating to do this. Effectively you’re just taking some yoghurt and making more yoghurt, but unless you can find some other way of sourcing that bacteria there’s not much you can do. So, let’s look as it another way. By making our own yoghurt like this we need buy only one pot and have an almost limitless supply as you simply top up your pot with some more milk every time you take some out. The result, of course, is less waste as you’re not forever buying plastic cartons from the shops.
Plus, of course, it’s cheaper.
So, we poured 750ml of milk (1.58 pints) into a saucepan and heated it very gently, just until it was warm to the touch. We certainly didn’t want to boil it as that would probably kill the bacteria. When it was comfortable to keep our finger in it for some time (around 30 degrees Celsius – 85 degrees Fahrenheit) we took it off the heat and stirred in the live yoghurt.
We cheated a little bit by using a digital thermometer, but only because this is the first time we’ve done it and we wanted to be careful.
Thermometer in milk
Now all we need to do is keep it warm and wait. We’ve put it close to a tepid radiator to keep it to cosy without it getting too hot and are looking at it every day. It’s been 24 hours so far, and not much has happened, beyond some thickening up at the bottom of the jar. We’re taking that as a good sign.
If all goes well, the yoghurt should take about three days to work its magic. Come back and see how we get on.
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Here’s how I make mine:
In the evening, take 1 litre of full fat milk and add 3 tbspn of milk powder. This thickens the eventual yoghurt so that it has the consistency of Greek yoghurt. Heat until it boils. Then let cool down for 30 mins until you can stick your little finger into it for 10 secs without yelping out loud. Mix in 3 tbspns of the previous batch of live yoghurt. Then decant into 2 soup vacuum flasks, each about 500 ml. Put the top on each flask (not the stopper, just the top) and place in the airing cupboard above the boiler overnight. Next morning, it has all completely set firm. Then empty into a glass jar and store in the fridge. Before you eat it all, use the last few tbspns to make the next batch. Mine has been going for over 6 months now, without having to refresh the yoghurt culture.
I’ve always used a double boiler myself, and then after I have it cooled down enough to be inoculated with the yogurt culture, I put it in a preheated vacuum sealed thermos. When it comes to getting the yogurt out, a wide neck soup thermos works better than a tall coffee thermos, otherwise it’s much like getting ketchup out, it’s pretty slow going with a lot of spanking the bottom of your thermos. Then I let it set for seven to nine hours.
I have been curious about yoghurt making for a while and a few years back I bought an Easy-yo yoghurt kit, where you buy the sachets and add water to it, and put it in a container that sits in a kind of large flask of hot water overnight, it worked lovely, but I never continued as there were so many ingredients in the sachet I didn’t feel it was the real thing!
What I wanted to know is that I was told that you can’t use the yoghurt source for too long as it becomes weaker in good bacteria and can make you ill, has anyone ever heard this.
I think I will try the above recipes in my easy-yo flask, and see how it goes.
I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. Yoghurt-making is very easy, as it’s really just a case of allowing milk to go off and a culture to multiply in it at a controlled rate. Let us know how you get on.
Good tip, Jesse. I use a very wide-necked flask, which I used to use for taking chunky home-made soups to work. I did try making my first batch in a regular flask years ago but, as you say, it took a long time and a lot of effort to get it out. It also took a long time to properly clean up the flask afterwards.
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