A friend of mine turned me on to this awesome recipe and I had to share it. Most people think making yogurt is too difficult to be attempted, or that you need a special machine to do it (I actually had a yogurt maker once upon a time, but it was literally twenty different parts to clean and keep track of- nobody has time for that).
This recipe uses a crock pot and makes a huge amount of yogurt (or Greek yogurt) for only the cost of a gallon of milk. I also love this recipe because you know everything that is going into it- no carrageenan, no artificial chemicals or preservatives, just milk- I’d recommend using organic.
The recipe below makes a gallon of yogurt, which will stay good for several weeks. Both my friend and her mom always have this in their fridge and have never had it go bad. I was worried at first since it seemed like a gallon of yogurt was such a large amount, but she says it’s actually a wonderful thing since it can be eaten with abandon for breakfast or even as an addition to recipes.
When she first told me about how she’s been doing this, I said it seemed like a lot of steps, but she said not to be scared off by that, that it’s mostly time that the yogurt just needs to sit unattended, and that the actual work is very little (and is worth it when you think how a tiny container of Greek yogurt costs $1 or more).
The things you’ll need:
1 gallon of milk (I’d recommend using organic whole milk)
½ cup of plain yogurt to use as your starter
Crock pot
A kitchen thermometer
Read the entire recipe and directions at The Tasty Cheapskate.
The only tip we have to add to the recipe is that after you cool the milk and before adding the starter yogurt would be to skim off the layer of film that forms on top of the milk. It’s not necessary, but my friend said it’s better to skim off the film than mix it in to keep the yogurt uniformly smooth.