Make Your Own Homemade Yogurt

Electric yogurt makers have been around for quite a while, and they seem to become more and more popular with every day that goes by. The fact is that these kitchen appliances deserve a bit of hype because they can help you save some money, start living a bit healthier, and even protect the environment.

Homemade yogurt isn’t packed with all the sugars and artificial colors that most manufacturing brands use on their products in order to make them look appetizing. You have two ways of going about things when you’re in the market for a new yogurt maker. You can either choose a device that can prepare 1 or 2 quarts of yogurt in a single container or opt for a product that comes with as many as six or seven containers.

Some people prefer the second alternative because it allows them to season their yogurt accordingly, without forcing the entire family to eat the same variety all of the time.

The simplest recipe for making homemade yogurt requires about 42 ounces of milk and 6 ounces of plain yogurt that contains live active cultures. You need to heat the milk, cool it, temper both the yogurt and the milk, and the fill up those containers. Here’s where you can find out what makes the difference between a device that’s easy to use and one that’s less so. Depending on the tartness and thickness you prefer, you need to set the yogurt maker for more or fewer hours. In this case, it would come in handy if you were the owner of a yogurt maker with timer.

The amount of time that you will have to wait for your homemade yogurt to be ready also depends on the fat in the milk that you have used. With whole milk, you will have to wait for just about seven hours while with skim milk, it will take you up to ten hours to be able to enjoy your fresh batch of yogurt.

However, these time spans don’t matter all that much because you always have the freedom to set the appliance right before going to sleep. This way, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll have some delicious yogurt waiting for you.

Something else that makes the difference between store-bought yogurt and the one you can make at home is the way it can be stored in the refrigerator. You can keep your yogurt in the fridge for up to ten days because it will get spoiled after that. By contrast, the stuff you can buy at the supermarket is packed with so many chemicals that it can last for as many as three months or even more as long as it’s refrigerated.

If you prefer Greek-style yogurt, you’ll have to first make your yogurt, then refrigerate it, and only then strain it using cheesecloth or some other type of sieve for this process. It takes just thirty minutes to make Greek yogurt from a regular one.