Yogurt, kefir, cheese, sour cream are all variations of cultured, fermented milk. We are only covering yogurt for now, but we are super interested in trying to make the others in the future! We were inspired by a recipe article by Karen Barnaby for home-made yogurt. We decided to try it out at home.

Yogurt is made by mixing warm milk with a probiotic culture of bacteria. The lactic bacteria cause a reaction in the milk and lead to the loss of water and thickening of milk into yogurt. This process is also what gives yogurt it’s tangy taste.

Probiotic culture can be difficult to find, but is available at Vancouver stores like Choices, Galloways, Whole Foods, or other food retailers oriented towards organic, natural, wellness products. To keep it simple, you can use a couple spoonfuls of store-bought yogurt like we have. It may seem silly to buy yogurt to make yogurt, but a 8 oz yogurt cup you can get for under $2 at the store can turn into several litres of your own homemade variety.

Homemade yogurt has many benefits. Not only is it less expensive, it also has a more delicate, less acidic taste if you like it plain without added sugars. Of course, you can mix things up by adding vanilla, honey, fruit, or even thick it up to Greek yogurt by straining through a cheese cloth. If you don’t have any cheese cloth on hand, we also found out that a coffee filter works: use a paper filter to line a tea leaf strainer, put the whole ensemble over a cup, pour in the yogurt, and leave it to slowly drain out and thick inside the fridge.

When you buy yogurt at the store, you get what you pay for– yogurt. But when you make it at home you have far more possibilities.

First off you will need:

4 cups of homogenized/whole milk; you can use skim milk, but you won’t quite get the creamy texture

a thoroughly cleaned if not sterilized glass jar and lid

2 tablespoons of store-bought yogurt

a digital thermometer, but conventional one is fine

an everyday cooking pot

a cooler or any tall container with enough depth to hold your glass jar

Before you begin: plug the sink and fill it with very cold water to the point where half of your cooking pot would be immersed when placed into the sink.

1 ) Pasteurize t he milk. Measure and pour the milk into a pot, heat it at a medium-high on the stove to 85 Celsius for at least 3 minutes. A rule of thumb is to heat it to just below boiling for 5 minutes.

Take care to not burn the milk! This is important because the only bacteria we want in there later will be the desired bacteria we are using as a culture.

2) Remove the pot from the stove and put it into a sink that is half-filled with cold water. You don’t want the water to spill into the pot. Have the thermometer ready. We want to cool the milk down to 55 Celsius. Technically….you can get away with 40-ish to 60-ish Celsius. Just make sure it is higher than 35 and lower than 60.

3) Get the glass jar ready. Add 2 tablespoon of store-bought yogurt. Then very slowly, pour the heated milk from the pot into the jar. Seal the jar tightly with the lid.

4) Now take your tall container of choice, fill it with the hot water you boiled earlier and some cool water so that the combined temperature of the water should be about 55 Celsius but anywhere between 40-60 is fine. Immerse the jar in the water. We are now incubating our cultured milk!

5) Cover your container and jar, nice and snug, with a thick blanket or towel and let it rest over-night for yogurt.

6) When you open the jar, you will notice a layer of clear liquid on the surface of the yogurt. You can drain this liquid, strain the yogurt, or perhaps recreate the warm water environment for longer incubation.

Katy’s Taste Review: We added a little vanilla and a tsp of sugar. It was delicious and creamy. We tried it with home-made granola for breakfast and we even added it to our carrot soup at dinnertime. It was a great yogurt and we’re looking forward to making it again!