MAKING YOGURT AT HOME
 It is widely known that adding yogurt to your diet is extremely beneficial for your digestive and general health. What most people don’t know is that having yogurt as a staple item in your refrigerator is beneficial to your grocery budget! Yogurt is a great substitute for eggs, butter, milk, cream, sour cream and mayonnaise in a multitude of recipes and it can be used in baking. But that’s not all! Homemade yogurt can easily be turned into yogurt cheese, a great replacement for cream cheese in dips, spreads and more.
You may be considering adding homemade yogurt to your weekly menu for the first time, or you may be a yogurt making veteran that could no doubt teach me a thing or two! Either way, we hope that the information below gives you inspiration or provides a few new ideas to keep this high quality, low calorie, nutritious and money-saving food on hand at all times!
Yogurt is made through the process of fermentation. Following a few steps, keeping some key temperatures in mind along the way, and you’ve got yourself a week’s worth of yogurt goodness!
 Making homemade yogurt isn’t a quick five-minute job; it takes a while to reach the necessary temperatures. However, it isn’t an excessively ‘hands on’ task either. It’s a perfect thing to do when you have other things to do in the kitchen. Seriously, it’s not as cumbersome as you might think!
Basic yogurt requires two ingredients – Milk and Cultures (that’s readymade yogurt).  MILK - In my yogurt making experience, I have found that low fat milk does not make for a thick and creamy yogurt. The taste is fine, taste great in yogurt smoothies, but not so much fun to eat with a spoon! The higher the fat content of the milk, the creamier the yogurt. If you do prefer to stick with your low fat milk favourite, you can obtain a better consistency by adding milk powder or unflavoured gelatine to the milk before the initial heating process.
 CULTURES - You will need about 6 Tablespoons of ready made yogurt to make 2 Litres of homemade yogurt. Another option is to use a 'starter' like Yogourmet's Yogurt Starter or Prio-botic Starter. Either way, it's handy to keep a package of these in your pantry, just incase you decide to make yogurt when you don't have your own starter in the fridge. Using leftover homemade yogurt is definately the most frugal way to go. When your supply is starting to look depleted, just put 6 Tablespoons to one side so that you have it on hand for your next batch. A couple of notes about using store bought yogurt. In my experience, plain greek yogurt has given me satisfactory results. Also, if you use a flavoured yogurt as your culture, be aware that your batch of yogurt will have the same flavour.
 The most important piece of equipment needed is the incubator. I have a Yogourmet Electric Powered Yogurt Maker that incubates the yogurt cultures with little effort on my part. However, there are plenty of other options...the key is to keep the incubating yogurt at a steady 115 deg F. This can be accomplished by using a cooler (place your jars inside and fill with hot water with a temp of 115 F) and leave from 4-6 hours or even overnight. I've heard of people placing yogurt in the oven with the light on, or using rice cookers, bread machines and even crockpots. Don't be afraid to experiment to figure out what works best for you. My mom used to wrap her container in a blanket and place it infront of our fireplace overnight...the dying embers seemed warm enough to complete the incubating process.
How To Make Yogurt Using a large stock pot - preferably one with a heavy base - heat the milk to 185 degrees F. A good quality kitchen thermometer will come in handy, just be sure to stir the milk before measuring the temperature. Remove the pot from the stove and allow to cool to 115 - 120 degrees F. You can speed up this process by placing the pot in a sink of cold water (just be sure to stir and measure the temp regularly).
 Mix your culture into the cooled milk. I prefer to use my 2 cup measuring cup to scoop out about a cup of the cooled milk, mix in the culture (starter yogurt or powder) and then I stir this into the rest of the cooled milk...avoiding overstirring, or whipping which cools the milk down too much.
Pour the mix into containers, tuppeware containers do work...but the best option by far is sanitized mason jars (when I use these, I often just put them through my dishwasher and that sanitizes them enough for me!).  Place your containers or jars in a cooler, pour in (115-120 degrees F hot) water until the jars are halfway submerged. Allow to incubate for 4 - 5 hours. Remove and refrigerate for 8 hours. The yogurt will store for about 10 days in the fridge...but that doesn't matter because you will have used it within a week!!
JOIN ME NEXT WEEK...I'll be looking at recipes that use yogurts as an ingredient. Also, I'll show you how to make yogurt cheese!
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It is widely known that adding yogurt to your diet is extremely beneficial for your digestive and general health. What most people don’t know is that having yogurt as a staple item in your refrigerator is beneficial to your grocery budget! Yogurt is a great substitute for eggs, butter, milk, cream, sour cream and mayonnaise in a multitude of recipes and it can be used in baking. But that’s not all! Homemade yogurt can easily be turned into yogurt cheese, a great replacement for cream cheese in dips, spreads and more. 
Making homemade yogurt isn’t a quick five-minute job; it takes a while to reach the necessary temperatures. However, it isn’t an excessively ‘hands on’ task either. It’s a perfect thing to do when you have other things to do in the kitchen. Seriously, it’s not as cumbersome as you might think! 
MILK - In my yogurt making experience, I have found that low fat milk does not make for a thick and creamy yogurt. The taste is fine, taste great in yogurt smoothies, but not so much fun to eat with a spoon! The higher the fat content of the milk, the creamier the yogurt. If you do prefer to stick with your low fat milk favourite, you can obtain a better consistency by adding milk powder or unflavoured gelatine to the milk before the initial heating process. 
Using a large stock pot - preferably one with a heavy base - heat the milk to 185 degrees F. A good quality kitchen thermometer will come in handy, just be sure to stir the milk before measuring the temperature. Remove the pot from the stove and allow to cool to 115 - 120 degrees F. You can speed up this process by placing the pot in a sink of cold water (just be sure to stir and measure the temp regularly). 
Mix your culture into the cooled milk. I prefer to use my 2 cup measuring cup to scoop out about a cup of the cooled milk, mix in the culture (starter yogurt or powder) and then I stir this into the rest of the cooled milk...avoiding overstirring, or whipping which cools the milk down too much.
Place your containers or jars in a cooler, pour in (115-120 degrees F hot) water until the jars are halfway submerged. Allow to incubate for 4 - 5 hours. Remove and refrigerate for 8 hours. The yogurt will store for about 10 days in the fridge...but that doesn't matter because you will have used it within a week!!
