Learn how to make yogurt with our tried and tested homemade yogurt recipe & yogurt making tips.
1. Heat Milk
Heat your choice of dairy or plant-milk to 90°C (194°F) in a pan or microwave.
Do this simple first step for a much thicker yogurt.
This binds the proteins in dairy milk, and activates any thickeners used with dairy-free yogurt starters.
2. Cool Milk + Add Starter
Cool the pan of milk for 5 minutes to 45°C (113°F) in a sink of cold water.
Stir in the yogurt starter culture. Don't use probiotic pills. Use a proper yogurt starter culture with the right bacterial strains to make great yogurt.
If you're making coconut yogurt, choose a dairy free yogurt starter culture.
If you leave it too long and it falls below the 45°C (113°F) temperature, use a thermometer to heat the milk up.
3. Yogurt Maker + Time
Add your milk and yogurt starter culture to a yogurt maker. Culture for 8 hours in a temperature range of 36°C - 45°C (97°F - 113°F).
If you want to make yogurt without a yogurt maker you need to find a place to keep your jar of milk and starter culture at this temperature for 8 hours.
Don't try and culture yogurt at room temperature and avoid poor quality yogurt makers that don't hold heat.
4. Chill Before Eating
Remove yogurt from the maker and refrigerate until well chilled before eating. Yogurt will set and thicken up further on chilling.
Always add flavours after making. Strain through cheesecloth to make thick Greek Yogurt.
3 comments
Hi, Thanks for your blog. I am learning about making homemade yogurt making with mixed results to date! Some questions if I may:
I have read elsewhere that the milk should be heated to 87 deg. where as you suggest 90 degs. Is this critical?
Do you just need the milk to reach 90 degs or should this temperature be held for a certain amount of time?
What is the difference between using live cultures and existing yogurt?
Many thanks,
Matt
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Country Trading Co. replied:
Hi Matt, thanks for your question. 87° or 90°C is not going to make a difference and you don’t need to hold the milk there for a set amount of time. Here’s a link to a summary about using yogurt to make yogurt vs using yogurt starter cultures – I hope this answers your question. https://www.culturecupboard.com/pages/faq On Thu, 14 Sep at 1:01 AM , Sunny <sunny@comment.sunnysideapps.com> wrote:
Add your milk and yogurt starter culture to a yogurt maker. Culture for 8 hours in a temperature range of 36°C – 45°C (97°F – 113°F). 90% of yogurt fails are caused by cold temperatures. -—————— would the yogurt maker keep the temperature for 8 hours or do I need to place the maker in a room where it is warm? It is getting cold in NZ and I just purchased the whole set not reading this bit, now I’m all worried whether it would work or not in current weather :(
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Country Trading Co. replied:
Thanks for your question. I use our yogurt maker in my kitchen in the south of NZ and I usually make yogurt after dinner and leave it overnight in my unheated kitchen. It makes fine yogurt and in fact when we were testing the maker many years ago we actually put the maker in the fridge and it still made the yogurt so please don’t be concerned about it keeping the temperature for 8 hours. One tip that I do when I’m prepping the milk is to fill the glass jar and the maker with hot water – that way when the milk goes into the maker it is not robbed of any heat by hitting cold glass. If you focus on prepping the milk correctly to the right temperature the yogurt maker will take care of the rest for you. Heather On Mon, 24 Apr at 9:02 AM , Sunny <sunny@comment.sunnysideapps.com> wrote:
Hi
I have the plant based starter and tried to make oatmilk yogurt with an epic fail. I followed the soya milk instructions but the yogurt did not set. I used probiotic oat milk from the supermarket as I usually have this on my cereal. Any suggestions as to what went wrong? I have success with coconut milk but that is a smaller volume of milk could this be the reason my oat milk did not set or do I need to add sugar to the oatmilk for it to culture. Any ideas?
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Country Trading Co. replied:
Hi Penny, thanks for your comment. Check your ingredients and nutritional panel but I think you will find commercial oat milk is usually 95% water, and you can’t make water into yogurt. In your Plant Based Starter pack, there is a recipe pamphlet, and it has some tips for how to fortify these thin plant milks to give them more body. I love the flavour of oat milk and it makes a great yogurt when the milk has enough solids for the yogurt culture to work on. Try the suggestions and let us know how you get along.