My sister shared this recipe with me and I had to get myself a Yogurt Maker. They are roughly $30 on Amazon, but the 8 cup Aroma one I own is on sale right now for $15. I was hooked the first time I tasted homemade yogurt. Not only is the taste way better, but it only costs about $.07 per cup and has much less sugar (not to mention no preservatives, etc, etc etc).
What you need:
Yogurt Maker, Powdered Milk, Water, Vanilla, Plain Greek Yogurt for a starter, and sugar.
Here's what I do:
- Put 5 C milk in a pan. I whisk 1 C of powdered milk in a medium sauce pan with 5 Cups of water. You can also use 5 cups of regular milk, but powdered milk will be half the price and the consistency of the yogurt is much better.
- Bring it up to 180 degrees (I would recommend using a cooking thermometer, but boiling point is about 212 degrees to give you an idea of what 180 is).
- Put it in the fridge until it cools down to at least 110 degrees (30-45 min). You have to cool it down enough though or it will be too hot and kill your starter.
- Mix starter and any desired flavorings in a separate small bowl. I stir in 3 TB plain yogurt (This is your starter. I REALLY like to use Plain Greek Yogurt), 3 TB of vanilla, and a few TB of sugar. You could also leave the sugar out and add honey before you eat it if you want to sweeten it. Each tsp of sugar is 4 grams, so if you add 8 tsps of sugar, each cup of yogurt will have 4 grams of sugar in it. That's WAY less than the 20-40 grams in store yogurt. Something to note is that you have to be careful about what flavorings you add to your yogurt, vanilla is fine, but if you want to add fruit it needs to be added after cooking is finished.
- Add your starter mix to your large pot of cooled milk.
- Pour into yogurt cups and follow manufacturing directions to start the process. I set mine for 9 hours and it comes out great for our tastes.
