Have you ever wanted to make your own yogurt? An electrical yogurt maker will remove all intimidating thoughts about making yogurt. You will learn how to create fabulously delicious yogurts in a machine in as little as 2 hours without the hassle of having to work with ovens. Your yogurt can be made as simply as pouring cultured milk into the jars as shown in the picture, setting the yogurt machines time and covering it up.
Steps
- Find out how much milk you need from the instructions with the machine. Use whole, 2%, 1% or skim milk and add 1/4 cup powdered, dry milk for each quart. Heat that amount of milk your yogurt maker will hold in a crock pot on low overnight. You can do the same thing on your stove in a double-boiler. Bring it to the froth stage or between 180 - 200F. Keep it at this temperature for at least 10 minutes. Optionally, for every gallon of milk you can add a cup of sugar and a pinch of salt. This helps the bacteria work and improves the taste of the resulting yogurt without decreasing it's nutritional value.
- Cool the milk to just under 120F. You'll need a thermometer to do this as temperatures are important. This milk now is referred to as tempered milk.
- Blend part of the tempered milk and {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} of yogurt culture for 10 seconds in a blender. This is the starter. The culture can be store-bought yogurt with live cultures in it, packets of yogurt culture bought online or at your local health food store, or from prior yogurt you have made and kept refrigerated or frozen. This step is extremely important as the culture has the bacteria in it that you needs to be distributed throughout the yogurt. You can use flavored yogurt. The final yogurt may taste faintly of the flavor you use. Keep the amount of any store-bought yogurt culture you use to under {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} or you will risk curdling the milk before it starts to turn to yogurt. Yogurt has acid in it which can curdle milk.
- Pour the starter into the rest of the tempered milk and stir for at least 10 seconds with a whisk.
- Pour the milk into clean jars or containers and put them in your yogurt maker.
- Follow the instructions from your yogurt maker to start it going.
- To find out if your yogurt is ready, after 2 hours, slightly jiggle one of the jars to see if it is firm. If it is, it is ready. You may want to let it go longer, up to 12 hours or more to increase the cultures in the yogurt and make it more tart.
- When you are ready, take the jars out and put them in the refrigerator to cool and set further. At this point you can add flavorings, fruit and other items like granola.
- Save part of the yogurt for the next batch. After 5 or so batches, you may want to start fresh to ensure the cultures don't degrade.
- Finished.
Tips
- Maintain a "yogurt bank" of cultures in your freezer. A yogurt bank is often called a "mother." Take freshly made yogurt and place tablespoons of it (or freshly opened store-bought yogurt) in plastic sandwich bags and freeze them. Be sure your freezer is set below 0F to make sure it will freeze quickly and keep well for as long as 6 months to a year or more.
- Keep freeze dried packets of yogurt cultures in your freezer where they will last indefinitely.
- If you plan to regularly make yogurt for you and your family, a larger unit is suggested. The one shown in the image above can be adapted to make as much as a gallon of yogurt at once. It all depends on how much yogurt you consume.
- Temperatures are important and up to a certain point, around 125F, the hotter the process, the faster it goes.
- Don't worry if the milk boils. It will turn out great yogurt just the same.
- It has been suggested that users of the smaller, restrictive yogurt makers tend to make yogurt for only a short while after purchasing the yogurt maker and then storing it away in the attic. It seems that they are not able to easily keep up with the demand for yogurt and require too much work for the amount of yogurt made at one time.
- Check out online sources of yogurt cultures. The Y1, Y4 and Y5 from a Cheese-making Supply Company are great and will produce very tasty yogurts.
- If you are in the market for a yogurt making machine, and rarely expect to be making yogurt, perhaps either purchasing the least expensive yogurt maker you can find, or making it manually using the 10 steps found in Make Yogurt would be the way to go.
- Thermometers are an essential part of yogurt making. They are your friend and they will keep you out of trouble.
- Each yogurt maker brand has it's own idiosyncrasies so you need to know how it works and the temperatures it uses.
- You can use milk combinations like 1 part whole milk to 2 parts milk made from dry, powdered milk.
- Note: the clock starts once the jars are placed in the yogurt machine. You can let the yogurt continue in your yogurt maker for 12 hours or longer. It will just get more tart. For those lactose intolerant folks, longer periods in the yogurt maker will allow the yogurt cultures enough time to make the yogurt tolerable.
Warnings
- If in doubt, throw it out. If you detect any off colors, strange smells or have any reason to doubt the yogurt is safe to eat, toss it. But just remember, if you followed the steps above, then the chance and risk of compromising your yogurt is almost non-existent.
- If you are using liquids other than cow's milk, you may find that the yogurt turns out thinner than typical yogurt. And certain products like ultra high pasteurized milk can present a real problem in trying to make yogurt out of it.
Using Yogurt Makers
- Some folks prefer using a yogurt maker that can supply heat for the yogurt making process by using electricity:
- The containers of the cooled, tempered dairy product, usually plain milk, also containing yogurt bacteria, are placed into the yogurt maker.
- A cover is supplied to keep in the heat and that maintains the containers at a temperature which, hopefully, allows the bacteria in the tempered dairy product in the containers go grow and thrive to make yogurt.
- Depending on bacterial strain(s) used and temperature of the dairy product. the dairy product will firm up to a yogurt consistency. This can take as little as 2 hours and can last 12 hours or longer. The shorter times usually result in less tart yogurts and longer times provide completion of the bacterial growth.
- Once the yogurt has gotten to the consistency desired, the containers are removed from the yogurt maker and placed in a refrigerator to cool for storage until consumption.
Yogurt Maker Types
- There are 3 major categories of retail yogurt makers available today:
- The un-timed, resistance heated yogurt makers are in the first category and are generally popular because of their low cost. This type has a factory temperature setting which is maintained regardless of environment. You cannot adjust the temperature setting. They tend to be less expensive because they are designed with no temperature controls. They are designed for average home temperatures, but higher or lower environmental temperatures can change the time it takes to make the yogurt and quality of the yogurt produced. They generally come with smaller cups and must be used repeatedly throughout each week to provide for daily consumption of yogurt. With larger families, they can become impractical because of the time it takes to make a given quantity of yogurt.
- The temperature regulating yogurt makers are more expensive as they have thermometers, thermostats, and their controls to be able to maintain temperature settings. The user can adjust the temperature setting of the yogurt maker to maintain the proper temperatures associated with the bacterial strain(s) used in the culturing of the yogurt.
- Yogurt makers which add timers and their controls to the variable yogurt maker applies heat to the containers for a variable time.
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