I have to be honest, I have never really thought about where my food comes from or how it is made until I had kids. The grocery store was where everything magically showed up and that’s where I bought it. The fact that we used to purchase corn from road side stands or that we grew a few vegetables when I was a kid (I think?), never lit the lightbulb in my mind that you can make and grow anything in the grocery store! It is going to be my mission to try to replicate any meals, snacks, and food in general that I purchase from the grocery store and our journey is starting with yogurt.
The price of yogurt has been increasing little by little over the years and I have started to look at the ingredients on the containers. Let’s take a look at the ingredient lists of some of the popular brand’s yogurt. These were the yogurt companies I used to purchase from most often from the grocery store. A note here as well is many will say “no added sugar”, but use other ingredients that your body considers sugar: i.e. sucralose. The other thing I want to note is that the ingredients on packages are listed in quantity order; most to least. So, the first ingredient in a product is also the ingredient that has the highest quantity in that product. To make healthier choices, you never want sugar to be in the top 3-5 ingredients depending on how many ingredients are in the product. In saying that, you also don’t want a long ingredient list, especially full of ingredients you do not know. Now my rant is over!
The best way for my family to achieve a healthier yogurt was to see if I could find a way to make it myself in a way that is easy to do since we are a big and busy family, and I found a way!
I was intimidated at first, but it is super easy to do and my method does not involve standing in front of a stove for hours. You can watch my video on how to make yogurt, or continue reading for the step-by-step version. I have also included a timeline, at the end, of what time of the day I usually complete each step.
Materials Needed
- Slow Cooker
- Milk (I use 3.25% but you can use 2%)
- Thermometer (I use a bread/meat thermometer but a candy one will work too)
- Yogurt (Use plain yogurt that has nothing in it but bacterial cultures and milk)
- Bowl (needs to fit about 5 cups of liquid)
- Spatula
- Tea Towel/Paper Towel
- Flavouring: vanilla extract, frozen or fresh berries, bananas, etc. (optional)
For Straining Yogurt (optional step):
- Bowl (big enough to fit a strainer in)
- Strainer
- Coffee Filters
- Soup Ladle
For Storing Yogurt:
- Mason Jars (125mL) or Tupperware/yogurt containers
Step 1
You can make yogurt in 2 volume amounts: 4 liters (one gallon) or 2 liters (a half gallon). To help you decide which amount to make, you will need to decide how much yogurt you want to make and/or how much liquid your slow cooker can hold. I personally use 4 liters of milk.
So, once you know how much you want to make, or how much your slow cooker can hold, with your slow cooker on your counter, pour your milk into the slow cooker. Then turn your slow cooker to low if you’re only doing 2 liters (a half gallon) or turn it on high if you are doing 4 liters (one gallon).
You want your milk to heat up to 185°F. For the 4 liters (one gallon), in my slow cooker, this takes 5 hours on high. The recipe I followed in the beginning did 2 liters (a half gallon) and her slow cooker took 3 hours on low.
For the first couple of times you make your own yogurt, I suggest checking once and hour and then noting how long it took to reach the temperature. Once you know a consistent time, for me it’s 5 hours, you will only have to set an alarm instead of constantly checking temperatures.
Step 2
Once your milk has reached 185°F, turn off your slow cooker and unplug it. This way no one accidentally turns it back on. Now you are going to wait and let your milk cool down to 110°F. It usually takes the milk about the same time to cool down to 110°F as it did to heat up to 185°F. So this step takes another 5 hours for me for the 4 liters (one gallon), and for the 2 liters (a half gallon) it took the girl 3 hours for her slow cooker to cool down.
Again, I would suggest timing this step out so you know in the future how long this step takes and can just set alarms instead of constantly checking temperatures.
If you want to flavour your yogurt, you can add vanilla extract at this step as well. For 4 liters (one gallon), I would use about a ½ cup of it, and for 2 liters (a half gallon), I would use a ¼ cup of vanilla extract. Once you have flavoured it, you can always tailor the flavouring amounts to your liking for future batches.
For my yogurt, I stopped using the vanilla extract because I always add fruit to it so I found I was wasting the vanilla extract because the fruit overpowered it. So, if you intend on adding fruit to it, then I would not add the vanilla extract. If you only want vanilla yogurt, then add the vanilla extract.
Step 3
Now that your milk has cooled down to 110°F, you are going to add the ingredient to magically turn it into yogurt! This ingredient is…….yogurt! I know! I was flabbergasted too when I found out. So, the reason you want to use a plain yogurt that has no additives and just contains milk , skim milk, or cream, and bacterial cultures is that we do not want the additives and sugars in our homemade yogurt. This is the yogurt I started with.
For 4 liters (one gallon), I used 1 cup of yogurt and for the 2 liters (a half gallon), you will want to use a ½ cup of yogurt. Put the yogurt into a separate bowl and add 4 cups of your heated milk from your slow cooker; 2 cups of milk if you’re doing the 2 liters (a half gallon). Stir the heated milk and yogurt gently. Your intention is to melt the yogurt as much as possible into the heated milk. Once it is mostly melted, add the yogurt milk mixture to your slow cooker. You can use a spatula to make sure you get any bits of yogurt that try to stay in the bowl. Give your slow cooker a stir to incorporate everything together.
Then, take either a tea towel or paper towels and place it under the lid of your slow cooker. The purpose is to catch any water droplets the lid will produce, so ensure your tea towel is large enough to cover the opening of the slow cooker or if you are using paper towel, make sure you use enough sheets to cover the opening and that there are 2 layers of paper towel. When I use paper towel, it takes 5 sheets of the “select-a-size” sheets to cover my slow cooker.
Step 4
I will preface this step with a warning: if you have recently used your oven, make sure it has cooled down. If you have an oven thermometer, ensure the temperature is below 115°F. Anything over 115°F will kill the bacteria cultures in your yogurt.
Take your slow cooker and place it in your oven. Keep your oven OFF. Close the door to your oven. Turn your light on inside your oven, the pilot light. This will provide enough heat to turn the scalded milk mixture into yogurt. You will keep your yogurt in the oven for about 8 hours if you are doing the 2 liters (a half gallon) and for around 12 hours if you are doing the 4 liters (one gallon).
This is the incubation period for your yogurt. The longer you keep it in the oven, the more flavourful/tangy your yogurt gets. When I make 4 liters, I usually leave it in for around 14-16 hours and it is not too tangy. The kids love this yogurt!
Step 5
Once your yogurt has incubated for the amount of time you desire, take it out of the oven. If your yogurt is at the consistency you are happy with from here, great! You can move on to Step 6 from here.
If you want your yogurt a bit thicker, then we are going to strain the yogurt. To strain the yogurt, you will want to line your strainer with coffee filters. I use a circular strainer and it takes 7 coffee filters to cover the strainer adequately. I use one to cover the bottom and 6 around the sides and they need to all overlap each other, and overhang the rim of the bowl. This just ensures you will not lose any yogurt in the straining process. Place the strainer into a big bowl. This will hold the whey that strains out of the yogurt, and it will begin to strain out while you are scooping the yogurt into the strainer, so do this before scooping your yogurt into the strainer.
Using a soup ladle, ladle your yogurt into your coffee filter lined strainer. Try to pour the first scoop of yogurt near the bottom of the 6 coffee filters that line the strainer. Do this with one scoop and try to go all around the strainer in a circle. The intention of this is to use the weight of the yogurt to hold the coffee filters against the strainer so the coffee filters don’t bulge out and create a gap where the yogurt can escape under the coffee filters near the bottom of the strainer. (Check out my video for a visual explanation of this step.) You only have to do this for the first scoop, then the rest of the scoops should be placed in the center at the bottom, so the weight of the yogurt is pressing against the coffee filters and keeps everything secure as the yogurt fills up the strainer.
Once you have scooped all of your yogurt into your strainer, place the bowl with the strainer inside into the fridge. Allow the yogurt to strain for a few hours. If you want Greek style yogurt that is very thick, I would suggest emptying the whey out of the bowl after a few hours and leaving your yogurt to strain for at least 8 hours or overnight.
If you want to thicken your yogurt a little bit but not a lot, then I would suggest saving some of the whey in a separate bowl for after Step 6.
Step 6
This is where we get to flavour the yogurt! If you are using frozen berries to flavour your yogurt, then I would suggest getting them out of the freezer a few hours before you want to add them to your yogurt. If you are straining your yogurt, a perfect time to pull the berries out of the freezer would be right after you put the yogurt in the fridge to strain. I put my berries into a food processor to thaw out so I can just process it once it is thawed. I am also going to remind you to put the blade to your food processor in BEFORE you add the fruit. You’re welcome! 🙂 Once the frozen berries have thawed, you can pour out the extra liquid so it doesn’t thin out your yogurt too much, especially if your goal is Greek yogurt.
If you are using fresh fruit, just add it into the food processor if you want it pureed, chopped, or somewhere in between.
To mix the flavouring into your yogurt, take your strainer out of the bowl. I put mine in one half of my sink. Then, empty the whey out of the bowl. Just a reminder to keep some whey aside in case you are trying to go somewhere in between stirred yogurt and Greek yogurt, this way you can add some back in to make the yogurt thinner. (If you have a freeze dryer, you should be able to freeze dry this and blend it into a whey protein powder or you can add a little bit of the liquid whey to a smoothie, but don’t add too much because it makes the smoothie foamy.)
Using a spatula, loosen any thickened yogurt away from the coffee filters. Hold the sides of the strainer and make sure you are holding the coffee filters against the strainer so the coffee filters stay in the strainer. Dump the yogurt into your bowl that was holding the whey.
To ensure you do not have to keep buying store bought yogurt to start your yogurt, you are going to save some of the yogurt before you add the flavouring. I just fill a 125mL mason jar with the plain yogurt since I usually make 4 liters (one gallon) every time I make yogurt. If you are making 2 liters (a half gallon) at a time, then save ½ cup of yogurt. This will be what you add to your scalded milk in Step 3 instead of store bought yogurt, so set it aside in the fridge away from your finished yogurts so no one accidentally eats it.
Now you can add your blended fruits into your yogurt and mix. I just use a spatula to mix it up, but if you want to be extra thorough, you could use an immersion/stick blender to make sure you get every little bit of yogurt blended together.
If your yogurt is still too thick after adding in your pureed fruit, then this is where you add some of the whey back into your yogurt until you reach your desired thickness for your yogurt.
Step 7
Now you can put your yogurt into jars or containers. I use 125mL mason jars to store all of mine. The boys take these to school and they’ve only broken one each all year, so that’s a win in my opinion. You could also buy those plastic yogurt parfait containers to store your yogurt in and prepare yourself some yogurt parfaits.
To fill your containers, you can use a wide mouthed funnel and spoon out your yogurt into the funnel. I personally use a big spoon and small spoon. I scoop out the yogurt with the big spoon and then use the small spoon the scrape the yogurt off the big spoon and into the mason jar. You will figure out the best method for you.
And voila! You have yourself a lot of homemade yogurt! Flavoured the way you want, with no preservatives, gelatins, added sugar, etc. It tastes so amazing too!
Making my own homemade yogurt usually takes me about 2 days and it is extremely hands off. It can be quite forgiving as well. You can read below for all the ways I have messed up the yogurt and it still worked out!
Timeline
Day 1
- 8:00 am Step 1
- 1:00 pm Step 2
- 6:00 pm Step 3 & Step 4
Day 2
- Between 9:00 am – 11:00 am Step 5
- Either 7:00 pm or 9:00 am on Day 3 Step 6 & Step 7
By setting alarms on my phone, I can do other tasks around the house, or run errands in town in between the steps. Each step only takes a few minutes. If you have a slow cooker that is programmable, then you could set the slow cooker to cook for a certain length of time. This will allow your milk to heat up while you are at work and then it will turn itself off and be cooled down by the time you get home. Then once you’re home, everything should be good to go for Steps 3 and 4. So you can easily make your yogurt around your work schedule! Yogurt is also amazing for your digestive track, especially if you’re a little backed up or if your stomach is a bit upset. It adds the good bacteria’s back into your stomach and digestive track. This has helped the kids when they were babies and hadn’t pooped in a day or two. Give them some yogurt and keep feeding some to them at each meal until they go and look out! It helps to get their guts back on track. This is also just my experience and not actual medical advice!
I hope you guys enjoy making your own yogurt! Let me know what you add to your yogurt and how you like it! Watch our video on how to make yogurt if you are more of a visual learner. If you have questions, please just ask! It will help me ensure the steps are easily understood by others and not just me! 🙂
I also want to let you know that I have really neglected the yogurt many times at various steps and it still worked out. I have let the milk cool down overnight by accident, continued on with the steps and it still made yogurt! I have forgotten the yogurt in the oven for a couple days, and continued with the steps, and it still made yogurt! I have even turned the oven on with the yogurt in it, remembering to pull the yogurt out when the oven was at temperature and trying to put dinner in there, pulled the yogurt out, let it cool down, continued on with the steps, and it still made yogurt! I have also left the straining yogurt in the fridge for a week and it was fine. So this process down not require you to be perfect in any way shape or form. It does not have to be exact, but do try to stick to the steps as much as possible. There have been times that I neglected it and it just didn’t work too, but that has only been twice in all the times I have been making yogurt, which I think is almost a year now, maybe more!
Thank you for reading! Original recipe can be found at Mommy’s Kitchen.
watch the tutorial here!
The original recipe that I followed can be found here.
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