Homemade (Crock Pot) Yogurt!

I made yogurt!!! Ok, I am super excited about this because we consume a ton of yogurt, about two of those big containers a week. I buy the organic local yogurt at our CSA for $3 which is a much better quality and price than organic yogurt from our grocery store but it still equals out to about $24 a month. So lets see if I can do better...

Store Bought
Best price for good quality organic yogurt- $3 for 32 oz.
$312 a year on store bought

Homemade
Organic 2% milk- $2.99 for a half gallon (64 oz.) so $1.49 for 32 oz.
$155.48 a year on homemade

Savings
$1.51 per 32 oz.
$3.02 a week
$12.08 a month
$157.04 a year saved making yogurt instead of buying it!


And if you want to factor in electricity for the crock pot don't forget the gas used to go to the store... I'm going to call it a wash. I won't even get into the cost of organic baby yogurt- super mega expensive and now I can make my own!

Homemade Crock Pot Yogurt

*You can easily double this to use the entire half gallon of milk

• 4 cups of milk- I used 2% organic (We are usually a skim family but I was worried it would be runny, after a lot of research I noticed people using whole milk or adding dry milk to help thicken their yogurt but 2% worked out great for me)
• 1/4 cup of yogurt- I used plain organic, just make sure it says live active bacteria- once you establish your own yogurt you can use your homemade yogurt as the starter.
• Crock pot
• Big towel

1. Start with very clean equipment- don't go nuts but a good handwash isn't a bad idea just to make sure
2. Pour 4 cups of milk into your crock pot
3. Heat the milk on low for 2.5 hours
4. Unplug the crock pot and leave rest for 3 hours
5. Take out about a cup of the milk and whisk in 1/4 cup of yogurt
6. Add the milk/yogurt back into the crock pot, stir, cover and insulate with a bath or beach towel- wrap it all the way around and wait 8 hours
7. At regular intervals about every 1.5- 2 hours turn on your crock pot on the lowest setting for 10-20 minutes. This is not necessary but it worked well for me.

This is how the yogurt looked after the 8 hour rest

8. At this point I decided to make about half of my yogurt greek style so I strained half of it into a wire strainer lined with cheese cloth. I put both the yogurts in the fridge overnight

I woke up to this :)

and this GREEK YOGURT!!!  :)

Add whatever flavoring you like- vanilla extract, sweetener, we like ours plain topped with honey or mixed into a smoothie. YUM! Seriously, give this a try, it may take a bit of time but the hands on is super quick and easy!