Homemade Yogurt - a few tips!
Yogurt is surprisingly easy to make. A few simple tools, a few specific points to remember, and some time. Will it come out super thick and Greek-yogurt-ish? Not that I’ve found. But making that thick yogurt is again surprisingly easy: a few simple tools, a few points to remember, and some time.
Basics for homemade yogurt! (minus one tool)
Yogurt starts (no pun intended) with a starter. You can buy commercial starter packs (I’ll likely leave with a few of these tucked away for emergencies) or, even simpler, use some yogurt you have on hand. A good starter yogurt specifics:
plain (not flavored)
have LIVE or ACTIVE cultures (it’ll say this right on the label)
NO gelatin
After that, you need milk* (fresh or powdered are the ones I’ve used; though general wisdom is that long life (UHT) milk will not work, I know at least one cruiser who has successfully used such products), and . . . well, nothing. Just the tools.
The tools?
wide mouth thermos (wide mouth so you can clean it easily)
digital thermometer
Sure, you can buy specialty yogurt making machines, or a self-contained thermos-like contraption called an EasiYo. These are awesome and fun and take a tiny bit of work out of the process. But on Calypso, we’re all about items that have multiple uses and don’t take up much space. In reality, I don’t use this thermos for anything other than yogurt making. I could, though.
The process: (props to Carolyn Shearlock at The Boat Galley for the basics here!)
Preheat the thermos with boiling water (which I then use to make the milk using the powder)
Milk at between 110 and 120 Farenheit before mixing in 3 TBS of yogurt starter
Pour starter-infused milk into the warmed Thermos and cap the Thermos
Let sit for 10-12 hours
Boom. Homemade yogurt.
Making thickened, Greek-style yogurt is a matter of straining out the whey.
Line a colander with a couple of layers of cheesecloth. Put a bowl underneath it to catch the whey - I use this as the liquid when I make bread!
Dump yogurt into the cheesecloth contraption
Let drain for at least an hour. The longer it drains, the thicker it will get. Letting it drain for 6-8 hours will net you something like a yogurt cheese, a mild, spreadable product which is lovely on crackers or toast.
You don’t have to refrigerate the yogurt as it’s draining but you might want to loosely cover it to protect it from bugs.
Details worth noting:
Milk. We don’t normally keep fresh milk on hand as neither of us drinks milk. To make yogurt, powdered full-fat milk is the way to go. The non-fat stuff you find everywhere in the US is pretty tasteless. Full-fat milk powder is hard to find inside the US, though lately I’ve found Nido brand inexpensively at Walmart. UHT milk is available in most grocery stores.
Digital thermometer. Look for one with controls on the front side as well as one that indicates when a temperature has stabilized. The cheapo tool I bought has neither (but it still works.)
Cheesecloth. Not reusable in my experience, mostly because if you try to wash it it falls apart thread-wise. I’ve bought washable flour-sack dish cloths that can sub in a pinch but because they’re less porous, it takes longer to drain the yogurt.
Breakfast on Calypso is usually toast or granola. It’s immensely satisfying when we sit down to a bowl of granola with yogurt and know it’s all homemade!