Since we have a good supply of raw milk I decided to try my hand at making home made yogurt. Yes, that creamy, thick white blob is real homemade yogurt. I mimicked the Frugal Girl's recipe.
1 gallon of raw whole milk in a heavy bottomed pot.
Bring it up to 180 degrees, this takes up to 20 minutes with cold milk.
(my next test will be to bring it only up to 165 so as to preserve the extra nutrients in raw milk)
Meanwhile place 4 quart canning jars and lids (either canning lids or plastic canning jar lids) into a pot and an little water and boil for 10 minutes, remove and just let them sit in the hot water until ready to use.
Place pot of 180 degree milk into a sink of cool water until the milk gets down to 120 degrees. This takes about 5 minutes.
If we desire a lovely vanilla yogurt we add in 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 Tbl of vanilla during the cooling down process. but the plain yogurt is delicious plain with fruit or with honey drizzled on it.
Stir in your starter with a whisk. You may use powdered starter (approximately 50c per gallon) or use a brand name 6 oz container of plain yogurt (approximately 75c per gallon).
When the milk reaches 120 simply pour it into the canning jars using a funnel and put the lids on.
Take your 4 jars and put them into a cooler and fill with 120 degree water (we get that right from our tap) so it comes about to the top of the yogurt in the jars.
Close the cooler and let it sit in there for 3 hours. Then simply place in the fridge. If you forget an leave it there 5 hours, I have found the yogurt is very forgiving!
The next day I had a nice consistency yogurt, which didn't slide of the container.
My first batch was quite runny but I tried to just heat it to 130 degrees, it was still very good and great as a smoothie but not like a nice creamy yogurt.
Be sure to check out Lady Modesty's Home Made Yogurt
HERE where you can make creamy yogurt in your crockpot!
I also want to give credit to the
Frugal Girl who also gave me some inspiration to make homemade yogurt.
No comments:
Post a Comment