I am sooo excited! I made yogurt last night! Well, most of it probably made this morning, but my work was done yesterday afternoon for the most part. It was super easy. I really truly believe that anyone can do this!
Ingredients:
-1/2 gallon (8 cups) Milk
-Starter (You can buy the cultures dried at some health food stores, but I just bought a little container of plain yogurt with live cultures- just a generic brand is fine as long as it says it has live cultures).
1. Heat the milk on low in the crock pot for 2 and a half hours.
2. Unplug the crock pot and let it sit with the lid ON for 3 hours.
3. When the 3 hours pass, take out a cup or two of the warm milk and whisk into your yogurt starter (1/2 cup of yogurt with live cultures; I don't know how much of the dried cultures to use).
4. When it's mixed well, add that mixture to your milk.
5. Put the lid back on, and leaving the crock pot OFF, wrap it with a couple of towels and leave for 8-12 hours.
That's it. You now have yogurt. If it's not thickened yet, turn the crock pot on warm for a few minutes and turn it back off again, replace the towels, and let it sit until the yogurt thickens.
When I got up this morning, there was a thin layer of thick yogurt on the bottom, and all the rest was still runny. I looked up on the internet and discovered that it probably just didn't stay warm long enough, and if I'd rewarm it a bit and let it sit longer, it would still set up, so that's what I did.
After a bit of reading, I found that yogurt cultures thrive best between 85 and 110 degrees. I decided to stick my meat thermometer into my yogurt (after thorough cleaning, I promise)!After about 2 1/2 hours on "Warm", my yogurt never rose above 102 degrees. I turned the crockpot off, rewrapped it in towels, and went back to bed for an hour and a half. :-) When I got back up, I had 2 beautiful quarts of yogurt! MMMM!!! Oddly enough, the thermometer registered 104 degrees when I got up. I guess the fermenting of the yogurt produced a couple degrees of heat.
Now that I know what temperature my crockpot runs, I will probably try a slightly different method next time. I will bring the milk to a boil and turn it off. Then I'll let it cool to the touch. I'll mix in the yogurt and add it to the crockpot. Then I'll leave the crockpot on "warm" for two hours and turn it off and let it sit. I'll let you know when I try this if it turns out any different. I was afraid to try this method before because I wasn't sure what temperature "warm" got to, and the cultures will die at 120. If you want to try this, I recommend either monitoring the temp. until you know how hot your crock pot will get how fast or trying the method I tried first. It ought to work no matter how hot your crockpot gets since you let it cool down for three hours so it ends up around 90ish degrees. You heat the milk to kill any competing bacteria, and you want the crockpot warm so it the yogurt cultures will thrive and your yogurt will incubate well. I think I may halve the recipe next time and just put it in a bowl sitting in a crock pot of water. We will NOT eat 2 quarts of yogurt before it goes bad! Anyone have a hankering for homemade yogurt? I did read that you can substitute it for sour cream in just about any recipe, and if you strain it through cheesecloth so it's thicker, you can substitute it for cream cheese as well. They say if you mix it half and half with mayonnaise, you can substitute it for that in a recipe too. This will not be quite as thick as store bought yogurt, but it's thick enough for me so far, and they say it will thicken a bit more in the frige. Of course, you can always strain some of the whey off if you want it thicker.
I'm not sure I ever would have been brave enough to try this if I didn't find this crock-pot recipe. Every other method I read involved either great amounts of warm water being constantly monitored and changed inside an ice chest or heating pads and huge bowls, or an oven being constantly turned on and off to maintain the right temperature, or setting it on top of some warmish appliance (which seems very inexact to me). I like this method much better. It's so easy! I suppose a person could buy a yogurt warmer thingy. They do make them, but I like just using my crock pot. It's easy, and I already have it, so I don't need a new appliance that is only good for one thing that I only do once in a blue moon.
My new favorite quote:
"To make yogurt, you simply do everything you've always been told never to do with milk- warm it up, contaminate it with bacteria, and let it sit out all night." Sorry I don't remember where I got that quote.
I got my recipe from this site:
http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/
She made a New Year's resolution to use her crockpot for one thing every day for a year and blog about it. She does normal dishes, things like this (yogurt, applesauce, applebutter), crafts, desserts (like fondue or creme brulee), just about anything you can imagine and somethings you wouldn't (like a hot foot bath). I've got a bunch of good ideas from her blog. I'm going to have to try more of them.
I hope you try this, and I hope you love it!
2 comments:
I might have to give it a try in my crockpot. I use either the oven on warm or cooler with hot water. Both ways have been easy and worked well for me.
Lucky, lucky... my oven is too hot. I have an electric oven, and I put it on the lowest setting it would go to and stuck a thermometer in to test it. It was way too hot for the yogurt. I would have had to monitor it way more than I would like. :-)Lazy me.
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