Nutritional information is included at the bottom of this recipe.

Did you know that many yogurts out on the market are just as bad for you as a Twinkie? Not only is dairy being revealed as linked to numerous health issues, but the sugar content in many store bought yogurts is mind blowing.

You might think a Twinkie is tooth-ache sweet with 19 grams of sugar. Well many of the popular brands of yogurt have up to 29 grams of sugar per serving! With the American Heart Association recommending no more than 30 grams of sugar per day for women, we might be better off with the Twinkie! Although we are not recommending that either.

The options out in the world for plain, unsweetened soy yogurt are slim. And if you can find it, it’s usually pretty expensive. Luckily it’s easy to make at home.

I’ve been making my own soy yogurt for years and someone recently asked us to post our homemade soy yogurt recipe. So here it is!

Soy yogurt recipe

All you need is:

4 cups plain, unsweetened soy milk

1 heaping tablespoon of soy yogurt for starter (sweetened is fine, just be sure it has live active cultures)

yogurt maker (or anything that will keep the yogurt at a steady temp of between 110-115 degrees F such as a heating pad or blanket, or a digital crockpot. I find a yogurt maker to be the easiest method, and you can find them pretty inexpensively)

optional: fruit and/or sweetener of choice

1. At medium temperature, heat the soy milk in a 2 quart sauce pan until it comes to a boil. Keep an eye on it! It expands a lot as soon as it reaches its boiling point, and can boil over pretty quickly.

2. Remove from heat and let cool to about 110 degrees. Meanwhile, preheat yogurt maker by turning it on.

As it’s cooling, you might see a skin form at the top of the milk. I find that removing it helps it to cool a little more quickly, plus I prefer it not to get mixed in to the recipe. It’s easy to remove with a spoon.

3. Once cooled to the proper temp, pour into your yogurt making container or bowl.

4. Gently stir in yogurt starter, cover and let sit in your yogurt maker for anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, depending on how tart you prefer it. The longer it sits, the more tart your soy yogurt recipe will be.

5. Let chill for a few hours and it’s ready to use! The texture should be creamy and somewhat firm, as yogurt is. The recipe makes about a quart of soy yogurt.

What not to do

There are a number of reasons that could cause your homemade soy yogurt not to firm up:

milk other than unsweetened plain soy milk was used

milk did not boil all the way or was somehow contaminated in cooling process

soy milk was not at the proper temp when starter was added

yogurt starter did not have active cultures

setting temperature was too cool

yogurt was not let to set long enough

But it’s very simple to avoid these pitfalls as long as you follow the recipe as directed. And once you make your own homemade soy yogurt, you may find yourself never buying overly sweetened, overpriced mass produced yogurt again!

The next generation

Before you eat it all up, however, save a heaping tablespoon for your next batch of homemade soy yogurt so you don’t have to buy another starter. With that, you can keep it going infinitely as long as you continue to regularly make yogurt.

I remember visiting my grandmother’s very sweet neighbor Victoria who was in her nineties. I would go over to her house with my grandmother, they would sit outside on folding lawn chairs and talk while I looked for four leaf clovers in her yard.

One day, before I had given up all animal products, she had given me some of her homemade yogurt. I’m sure she didn’t have a yogurt maker. I’m guessing she had a gas stove where the pilot light kept the oven in the right temperature range.

That day she told me she had been continuing her yogurt from the same strain for over fifty years!!! That was dairy yogurt, but the same can be done with soy.

I find the longer I have the same culture going, the better the yogurt comes out. I had one going myself for several years. I started it from my favorite soy yogurt that I brought back to the states from Europe. But then finally one time I waited too long to make a new batch and had to start over from scratch.

It’s your jam

There are endless dishes with which you can use this soy yogurt recipe. My favorite way to enjoy it is to mix it with some lightly sweetened jam or homemade compote.

Here’s the nutritional information for the recipe. Note that all values are PER 6 oz. SERVING, calculated assuming the recipe makes around 5 servings. Note that the totals are just for the soy yogurt recipe itself, they do NOT include any added fruit. Enjoy!