I made yogurt!

It was amazing.

After several months of thinking about it, I finally did the research and made 1/2 gallon of yogurt in my slow cooker (Crockpot). I tried to take a picture, but a photo of white yogurt in a white container in a white fridge just doesn't turn out very well.

The yogurt was a thick, plain, non-fat variety. It looked like the stuff from the store, but only cost about $0.75/quart to make. The children mixed in some sugar and homemade granola and ate it. Today they ate it again. I mixed in some jam and granola. I think jam with fresh fruit would also be nice.

I looked up several, well, many recipes and combined them to come up with this version.

Homemade Yogurt

Start to finish time:
About 12 hours

Ingredients:
2 quarts (1/2 gallon) pasteurized milk (I used skim milk)
or
1-1/2 cups non-instant powdered milk added to 2 quarts of water
1/2 cup plain yogurt with live cultures (I used a non-fat Greek-style plain yogurt)
1-1/4 cups non-instant powdered milk, optional, used to make a thicker yogurt
2 tsp. unflavored gelatin dissolved in some milk, optional, used to make a thicker yogurt
4-8 Tb. sugar or honey, optional
Vanilla, other flavorings, jam, jelly, fruit, etc., stirred in after the yogurt is made (I think some of the flavorings could be added before, but you have to be careful not to add something like fresh fruit that will curdle the milk and ruin the yogurt)

Equipment:
Slow cooker
Thermometer
Towel for more insulation

Directions:
Put the 2 quarts of milk in your slow cooker and mix in the extra powdered milk and gelatin, if using, as well as the sugar or honey (to make it less tart). If you use whole milk, then you probably don't need to add extra powdered milk to make thick yogurt. If you look at the ingredient labels, you will see that non-fat or low-fat varieties of yogurt have stabilizers of some kind in them, such as gelatin or pectin, to make the yogurt thick.

Heat the milk using the low setting until the milk is 185 degrees F. (You could probably go a bit hotter, since one recipe said to get the temperature to 200 degrees F and hold it there for 20 minutes to thicken the yogurt even more.) This took about 2-1/2 hours in my slow cooker.

Turn off the slow cooker and let the milk cool until it is 115-120 degrees F. The yogurt bacteria start to die if the temperature is over 120 degrees F. Meanwhile, take out your yogurt starter and let it sit on the counter to bring it close to room temperature. Most recipes said you can let the milk slowly cool; one recipe said to cool it rapidly. It was getting very late at night, so I started to stir the milk until it was cool enough. It took about an hour with stirring to get it to the correct temperature.

Take out 1 cup of warm milk and add it to the 1/2 cup of yogurt. Stir it well to dissolve the yogurt. Pour this mixture back into the milk in the slow cooker. Stir well. The temperature should be between 110-115 degrees F. Do not turn on the slow cooker.

Put the lid on the slow cooker and cover everything with a large towel. I then put the whole assembly inside my cold oven to keep it away from drafts, but you can leave it on the counter. Maintain the milk at this temperature for 6-8 hours. The longer you incubate the yogurt, the more acidic it will become. You might need to turn on the slow cooker to its lowest setting for 10 minutes once or twice during this time to maintain the proper temperature. I went to bed, since, as I mentioned before, it was getting very late.

In the morning, I opened the slow cooker and saw that I had a little less than half a gallon of yogurt. It was still warm, in the 90-degree range. Since the yogurt sat for a bit more than 8 hours, I assumed the yogurt had been in the correct temperature range for the required time. I scooped the yogurt out and put it in a glass container in the fridge.

If the yogurt smells nasty or tastes funny, then you throw it away. Yogurt should keep for 10-21 days in the fridge. If there are funny "strings" in the yogurt, then you might need to strain the milk after heating it the first time. These are strings of milk proteins that coagulated, often because of the added powdered milk.

You can put the yogurt in a colander lined with cheesecloth (hence the name!) and let the liquid drain out for an hour or more to make a thicker yogurt. If you drain it overnight, then place something heavy on top of the yogurt and let it stand for another 8 hours, you end up with "yogurt cheese." Supposedly (since I have yet to do this), the flavor is similar to sour cream, but the texture is that of soft cream cheese. You should get about 1 lb. of cheese from 2 quarts of yogurt.

Here is a link to a U.S. extension service technical recipe with all the trouble-shooting hints. There are quite a few online versions of this recipe, as well as photos, if you need them. If you eat lots of yogurt every week, and homemade yogurt in a slow cooker isn't working for you, then you probably should just buy one of the nice yogurt makers ($50-$60 range). You will probably make up the cost of the yogurt machine within a year with the savings from not buying yogurt at the store.

And finally, one person, commenting on the yogurt making recipes, said something like this: "I love homemade yogurt. Here in India I just wash out my old yogurt container, pour in milk, add a spoonful of yogurt, stir it, cover it, and set it outside. In the morning I have wonderful yogurt." It makes everything we do seem quite complicated.

New recipes

These last two months I have been trying at least one new recipe a week. To make things easier, the recipe doesn't have to be a main dish. It can be a side dish or salad or something like that. I think even a new salad dressing would count. Here are some of the things we've tried:

• Baked macaroni and cheese (like regular macaroni and cheese, but after you are done making it, you bake it for 30 minutes). We like the regular stuff just as much, so I don't know that I will bother to bake it.
  
• Zucchini-chicken pasta (Mindy's recipe, which I will put in the new cookbook). This was a good recipe. I used the sauce technique on another pasta recipe.
• Garlic-butter sauteed Brussels sprouts. Much better than it sounds, but not something you would do every week. Maybe once every two months with different vegetables.
• Eggs Benedict. This was a big hit with the children. The Hollandaise Sauce was very nice. I think it was the original sauce that would have been used in the broccoli-chicken recipes we have, but that has been changed to something easier using canned chicken soup and sour cream.
• Breakfast burritos. This was a big flop. No one would eat them.
• Grilled chipotle steak tacos. This was great. Even the children ate the meat.
• Beef rogan josh. This was like a beef curry with onions, served on rice.
  
• Cucumber dill salad.
  
• Chipotle chicken salad tacos. Another good, quick recipe from a Rick Bayless Mexican cooking book.
  

As always, if anyone has a good recipe to share, I'm happy to try new things. Sometimes we get tired of eating the same dishes every month--except for macaroni and cheese. The children don't ever get tired of that.