Internet Recipe #4: Crockpot Yogurt

I was alerted to this recipe by Mystie  last spring. I think she send me the link to this time-saving tweak, as well. When I told my mom about making yogurt a couple days ago, she asked for the recipe, so I thought as long as I was retyping out my own variation on the recipe I might as well get a blog post out of it as well!

Homemade Crockpot Yogurt

Ingredients:

6 cups whole milk, pasteurized (as opposed to the 8 cups in the original recipe – it made a little too much yogurt, so I cut it back a little and it still works)

 1/2  cup or more storebought plain yogurt with live cultures (after you make your first batch you can use your own yogurt to seed the next batch)

Pour the milk into your crockpot, set it to low and heat it for about an hour. The goal is to get it to 110 to 115 degrees F. If it gets too hot after an hour, turn it off and let it sit with the lid off until it gets to your target temperature. Similarly, if it isn’t hot enough.. heat it longer! After you’ve made it once or twice you should theoretically know exactly how long it takes to heat to the target temperature, but I always have distractions and can’t-get-to-it-right-nows, so it always takes me a while to get the temperature just right.  When you do, TURN OFF THE CROCKPOT. Use an instant read thermometer or a candy thermometer to check the temperature.

Dip a large glass cup measure into the hot milk to get around 1-2 cups of milk. Stir in the plain yogurt. Dump all of it back into the crockpot and stir it in.

Now put the lid on, and wrap the entire crockpot in a large heavy bath/beach towel to insulate it and allow it to cool more slowly.

Give it about 4 hours, then check it. If it has worked (and it should if the milk wasn’t too hot (which kills the cultures) or too cold(which never starts them working) to begin with), you’ll see that it has turned into your own batch of plain homemade yogurt. The consistency is different than storebought yogurt… I’ve never gotten it to a sour-cream like consistency throughout myself, though I’ve read that others have. One thing you can try is to turn the crockpot on for 10 minutes after it sits the initial 4 hours, then TURN IT OFF AGAIN, rewrap it, and let it sit for another 2-3 hours. I’ve tried this before, but like I said, never gotten it to a completely sour-cream like consistency. I noticed last time I made it that it “gelled” more after it’d been in the fridge for a while though.

Plain yogurt is like a blank canvas – what you can do with it is only limited by your imagination. I have a limited imagination. But my kids love it plain with brown sugar, or with sugar and frozen berries/other fruit stirred in. Probably my favorite is mixing it with a little brown sugar and some homemade granola or grape nuts. I like to eat that for dessert as an ice-cream substitute!

One of these days I’m going to try it with half and half – I expect that would be REALLY good… if somewhat calorific.

I stopped making yogurt after a few months last summer/spring –  I think we overdosed on yogurt after the first few months. But I started up again at the beginning of tax season. Just got the bug to try it again.  Maybe it’ll be a seasonal cooking item with me!