Homemade Yogurt

2011-07-18T09:33:00.001-05:00

So, I've tried this before. Get the milk, get the starter, heat for 8 hours and you should have nice organic plain yogrut right? Well, I dont know WTF went wrong, but all I had at the end of the day was a smelly spoiled milk mess in my crock.

So after discussing it with some folks on Ravelry, I was able to determine my starter may not have been what it should have been. So I headed to the store and purchased some organic Fage 2%. This time? I ended up with blissful, creamy greek yogurt goodness that my kids love! I mix in some low sugar jams and they eat it like it's their last meal.

So here's what I did.

What you'll need:

Milk (the higher the fat content, the creamier it will be, I used 1%).
Yogurt starter (I used Fage 2%), you'll need to get some without any additives. Something organic.
Crockpot
Heating pad
Candy thermometer

You start by heating the milk to 180º. Now this is important. You'll want to make sure you heat it up till it gets foamy on top. This will kill any bad germs right outta this milk. After this, either put the pan in in some ice water (be sure to not get water in your milk!) or you can just set it aside. When it reaches 110-115º, you're ready to go. I just filled my sink with ice water and set the pan in there, sort of like a double broiler, it took about 5 min to cool down.

Next, you'll add in your starter. Now, how much milk you've used will determine how much starter you'll need. For every half gallon of milk, you'll need 2tbsps of starter yogurt. I used an entire gallon of milk and an entire carton of Fage 2%. Stir it up good now.

Next, set your heating pad to Medium. Mine has four settings, warm, low, med and high. Medium was able to keep my yogurt at 112º for 8 hours. Also, if yours is like mine, you'll need to keep turning it on once every couple of hours, as it has an auto shut off. Also, make sure to put the heating pad on a cutting board and not on your counter, you don't want to ruin your counter!

So, just shut the lid, cover with a towel and you're ready to go! Come back 8 hours later, and you'll have yogurt! Now, I went a step further. I tripled some cheesecloth, and put it in a colander, and then added the yogurt and let it drain overnight in the fridge. This drains the whey from your yogurt and takes it from being a runny thin yogurt to a creamy greek goodness. 8 hours in the fridge or so, was plenty. I also used the whey to water the tomatoes in my garden, which helps keep blossom end rot at bay.

Garden 2011

2011-07-18T09:16:00.000-05:00

So this year, we widened and lengthend the garden. It went from 9x9 to about 15x15 or maybe a bit larger. I added a fence as you can see here:

And hopefully this will at least keep the kids out, if not animals! My kids get entirely too excited about picking the fruits of our labor and will go as far as to pick green tomatoes, tiny jalapenos, and peas that aren't ready yet, just to get in on the fun!

We've planted three types of tomatoes, six different types of peppers, eggplant, spinach, broccoli, okra, crookneck and zucchini squashes, cauliflower, peas, and cucumbers.

Crunchy Goodness

Homemade Yogurt

Garden 2011