Homemade Yogurt

If there is one snack food that I can eat everyday and not feel guilty it is yogurt. I love it; it is relatively good for me; and it keeps me full. But it comes in these little packages that are hard to recycle and is not something that could readily be reused. Most yogurt comes in #5 plastic which is polypropylene. It is as "safe" as most of the plastics out there but not all places can recycle it.

So we decided to cut out the middleman.

First we took to the almighty google to find out ways to make yogurt. That combined with a call to mom we figured something out. But before we started we were given a great gift for her birthday, a yogurt maker! She was given a YM80 Yogurt Maker by Euro Cuisine. The way the yogurt maker works is a bit different. You can't just throw in the ingredients and turn it on and walk away. The YM80 holds the yogurt at a constant temperature after you boil the milk and add in the yogurt cultures (in our case we used a container of yogurt we bought at the store).

Getting it ready

Here's how it went:

It took a little longer than we thought to make. My girlfriend boiled the milk (it did burn a little but it was our first time and that is going to happen) and then we had to let it cool to 95ºF. It actually took a long time to cool down. After that we added in the yogurt and poured it into the jars. We stuck it in the YM80 and let it sit or 12 hours. Taking it out and trying it, it tasted really good! There is a bit of a smokey after taste from burning it but nothing terrible. I add a tablespoon on some locally made honey and I have organic, fat-free, honey yogurt.

And it is cooking or whatever

The benefits:

We can make 7 little containers of organic yogurt for about $4 versus paying $10.50 at the store.

All the jars are made out of glass so there is no leaching of something nasty going into our yogurt.

No more containers going to recycling and no more lids going to landfill.

We know exactly what is going into our yogurt and can add any flavoring we want.

A walkthrough of the entire process makes us savor it a bit more.