A Slow Cooker Is The Secret To Effortless Homemade Yogurt
Imagine this: Your family goes through a multi-pack of fruit yogurt every morning for breakfast. You love to stir Greek-style yogurt into your cooking and incorporate cups of the regular stuff into your baked goods. Maybe you do not have to imagine it; this is already how your family eats and how you cook. Store-bought yogurt is not terribly expensive, but if your household effortlessly plows through the stuff daily, those grocery shopping bills can quickly add up.
However, there is excellent news for yogurt fans. Making yogurt at home is actually simple, easy, and much more affordable than having it permanently on your shopping list. All you need by way of appliances is a slow cooker to incubate the yogurt (more on that later). Of course, you can definitely make yogurt on the stovetop with a little bit more attention, but using a slow cooker frees you up to focus on other tasks.
There are many kinds of yogurt that you can make at home, from full-fat traditional set yogurt to non-fat Greek yogurt and all the ones in between. In fact, the resulting yogurt will likely be so surprisingly delicious that you will wonder why you ever ate the store-bought stuff in the first place.
How do you make yogurt at home?
So how exactly does one make yogurt with a slow cooker? Well, no matter the vessel, homemade yogurt is essentially a ferment that only needs two ingredients: milk and yogurt. The latter may seem redundant, but ready-made yogurt will already have the necessary bacteria for the yogurt-making process. This will save you a trip to a specialty store to purchase yogurt cultures to act as a starter for the fermentation. Choose a plain, unflavored yogurt that you enjoy, as you will essentially be replicating the properties of this yogurt in your homemade batch. Look for lactobacillus bulgaricus or streptococcus thermophilus in the ingredients list to ensure the best results, and keep in mind that a flavored, fruity yogurt may not work well.
First, heat the milk in the slow cooker until it reaches 180 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which competing bacteria will be eliminated. Let the milk cool for a few hours until the temperature reduces to about 110 degrees Fahrenheit before stirring in the starter yogurt. After this, you need to incubate the yogurt — that is, hold it at a particular temperature for an extended amount of time. The slow cooker is the perfect place to do just that. Sure, a dedicated yogurt-maker could do the job, but unitaskers are decidedly unhelpful in a small kitchen. Let it hang out in the slow cooker for at least eight hours or overnight, then transfer it into containers to be refrigerated. Congratulations, you have just made yogurt!
Using your homemade yogurt
Homemade yogurt will last in the fridge for up to two weeks. While that may be a comfortable stretch of time, there are so many ways to use yogurt that you'll likely run out of the stuff before it goes bad. Aside from it not having any unknown additives, the most useful detail about homemade yogurt is that you can flavor it however you like. Swirl in a drop of vanilla to brighten it up and serve it with granola and berries for breakfast. Stirring in cucumbers and chiles will make a moreish raita to accompany an Indian meal.
You can also tweak the process steps to give you different kinds of yogurt. Scalding the milk for longer gives you a firmer yogurt, and so does incubating the yogurt for a longer period. Straining the yogurt gives you Greek-style yogurt; save the protein-rich whey for your smoothies! Using different milks will obviously produce different kinds of yogurt, which is especially useful for those with specific dietary needs. Try nonfat milk for a nonfat yogurt, or even coconut milk or nut milks to make vegan yogurt. In this case, you'll have to use vegan yogurt starters, as using regular dairy yogurt will make it non-vegan.