Why you should make your own yogurt (Recipe)

Homesteading for hot girls.

Yogurt was, pardon the pun, my starter from-scratch food. It began with a goal to use less single-use plastic and rapidly spiraled to baking my own bread and researching how to build an incubation chamber for homemade tempeh. But yogurt, once you get the hang of it, isn’t complicated. And if you work from home part-time it’s a convenient way to make your own convenience food. 

Often relegated to breakfast in American diets, yogurt is so much more—it can be dolloped on soup, made into naan or waffles, and stirred into creamy dips, dressings, and smoothies. It’s a truly versatile joy to have on hand. I try to eat some type of fermented food every day (the only thing that fixed my decade-long digestion issues, but that’s another letter entirely) and yogurt—rich, protein-filled, and refreshing—is a consistent feature in my diet.    

I began making yogurt because of the plastic, but I’m still doing it because, as with my fruits and vegetables, I try to be aware of where my food is coming from and what is in it. I haven’t eaten meat in about 14 years, but reading

Alicia Kennedy

’s book on plant-based eating, “No Meat Required,” last year motivated me to rethink my rather thoughtless vegetarian dairy consumption. I tolerate dairy just fine and am not morally against animal products (even meat), but the dairy industry is rife with worker and animal mistreatment and, like the meat industry, comes with its own set of environmental implications. I don’t plan on cutting out dairy, but I do think I can easily reduce my factory-farmed dairy consumption. 

Thank you to my beautiful friend Meg for hand-modeling and understanding my mood board of paintings and pottery photos for these gorgeous nail designs.

Here in New York City, I typically buy local milk from Precycle, where I return the glass bottles for reuse, and create a zero-waste yogurt; when Precycle is out of stock, I pick up a half gallon from Farm to People. During the summer months, I get our yogurt milk from our CSA, which does come packaged in plastic, but is affordable, local, and sourced by 607CSA, whose model and ethos I trust. 

Homemade yogurt can be significantly cheaper than high quality store-bought yogurt, too. A half-gallon of the CSA milk can make about 850 grams of yogurt for $3.90 and or a half-gallon in glass with the rebate is around $6. The same amount of Fage is at least $8 here in Brooklyn. And with that you don’t even get the whey, a highly nutritious yogurt byproduct that is an ingredient in its own right; yogurt whey has the same nutritional value as yogurt, including those healthy probiotics. I’ll dive deeper into whey and how to use it in the second part of this series, but don’t pour it down the drain. (I usually freeze it in cubes and use it for smoothies or to replace water in baking projects. Heating it kills the probiotics, but leaves the protein and other nutrients in tact.)  

For this process, I use the Instant Pot. There are appliance-free ways to make yogurt, but they require some finagling to keep your ferment at a consistent, warm temperature. Some people use an unheated oven with the light on, or smother their yogurt vessel in layers of bath towels as insulation. 

I don’t know if I would recommend buying an Instant Pot just for yogurt—in fact, I wish I had purchased a bread proofer instead so I could also use it for other fermentation projects such as tempeh-making and proofing dough (and I’ve found that I prefer to cook beans on the stovetop). But if you have an Instant Pot already and don’t plan to turn your kitchen into a fermentation lab, this is a great use for it. Funnily enough, you’re not using it for the pressure cooking features. Instead, the Instant Pot heats the milk (without burning it) and creates a temperature-stabilized incubation chamber to ferment the yogurt-inoculated milk. It also enables a hands-off process, meaning that after a few short steps you can walk away and come back to a pot of luscious, tangy, locally-sourced yogurt.

A few tips I’ve gleaned from my experience:

Do not use ultra-pasteurized milk. You can also use reduced and low-fat milk, but it will create a grainy texture. (And, technically, unpasteurized (raw) milk, but you need to do your own research on your state or country’s regulations for raw milk and follow a raw milk recipe.)

For your yogurt starter, begin with a yogurt brand you love. I recently switched to using The White Mustache, a small-batch yogurt brand whose founder, Homa Dashtaki, wrote the yogurt tome “Yogurt and Whey.” For a reliable grocery store brand, I like Fage. But you can use any real yogurt, just make sure it is plain (not flavored with fruit or sugars) and the only ingredients are milk and live, active cultures. Do not use yogurt with pectin or other artificial thickeners.  You don’t need to buy a new yogurt every time you want to make yogurt. Save a few tablespoons of your homemade yogurt in the fridge and use it for your next batch. 

Be warned that the commercial cultures in grocery store brands begin to weaken after four or so cycles. It’s edible still, but the texture becomes goopy and off. At that point, I will start with a new yogurt. (The White Mustache seems to have more strength than Fage, but not enough to use indefinitely.) There are heirloom yogurt starters that, in theory, can be reused forever. I bought one from Cultures for Health, but it took two tries to activate and then died after I froze the starter for three weeks while traveling. (You’ll know a starter is dead when the yogurt doesn’t set.) I plan to try again with another source—perhaps a Bulgarian-style starter? Let me know if you have a recommendation. 

“Greek” yogurt and labneh are made by straining the yogurt after its ferment and after it’s been chilled. You can use a cotton cheesecloth or fine-mesh sieve. I have this strainer for my oat milk, that makes cleanup much easier, but takes longer than cheesecloth. The longer you strain, the thicker it will become. What you’ll have left is the whey.

Next in this series will be about how we eat yogurt and then how we use the whey. 

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Easy, creamy Instant Pot Yogurt

This recipe makes about 850 grams of strained yogurt and 825 grams of yogurt whey. Use pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), whole milk from a local source. 

Yogurt is a fermented food, so it’s important to work with extremely clean tools to avoid unwelcome bacteria. I’m comfortable using the dishwasher to clean my tools, but look into sterilizing your Instant Pot if you’re concerned. 

See below the recipe for some example schedules. 

Ingredients:

• 1 half-gallon (1.89L) whole pasteurized milk (not ultra-pasteurized)

• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt with live, active cultures (the only ingredients should be pasteurized milk and bacteria such as L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Casei. Fage (plain) is a good grocery store brand) 

Required tools:

• Instant Pot

• Food thermometer

• Cheesecloth or a superfine sieve 

Instructions:

1. Before beginning, remove the Instant Pot’s sealing ring or replace with an extra odor-free ring — you don’t want your yogurt to taste like your last Instant Pot meal. (Just remember to put the ring back on for the next time you pressure cook!) 

2. Pour milk into the Instant Pot, put the lid on, and click the Yogurt button until it reads “boil.” (Don’t worry about the pressure valve at any point, you’re not using the pressure cooker settings.) 

3. Once the Instant Pot beeps, usually at around 30 minutes, check the temperature. It should be between 175 to 200F. Carefully remove the inner pot with oven mitts or a towel and place it on a trivet or stovetop grate to cool to 114F. This usually takes about 45 minutes. If you have a high-low alarm food thermometer, set it up now to ring at 114F. 

4. While the milk cools, scoop 2 tablespoons yogurt into a small bowl and leave at room temperature. 

5. Starting at the 30-minute mark, start to check the temperature of the milk. Once the milk reaches 114F (can go as low as 110F), scoop out ½ cup of the warm milk and pour it into the bowl of yogurt. Gently mix the yogurt and warm milk together until the yogurt dissolves into the milk. (A thin layer of film may develop on the top of the milk, simply skim this off before proceeding.)

6. Pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into Instant Pot and gently mix. 

7. Moving quickly, return the inner pot to the Instant Pot and put the lid back on. Click the yogurt button until it’s set to normal. Use the + and – buttons and set the Instant Pot timer from anywhere from 8 to 16 hours. The longer it ferments, the more tart it will be. If it’s your first time, I would suggest starting at 8 hours and going up from there. 

8. Once the Instant Pot beeps, remove the inner pot. The yogurt should be set and jello-like. 

9. Cover the pot (a large dinner plate works perfectly) and move to the refrigerator to chill for 8 to 24 hours. 

10. After chilling, you can transfer the yogurt to storage containers to eat as-is or strain it to make thicker, Greek-style yogurt. 

11. If you’re straining, scoop yogurt into a nut milk strainer or cheesecloth-lined mesh strainer with a bowl underneath.

12. Cover yogurt with a lid, plastic wrap, or folded-over cheesecloth, and put it back in the fridge to strain. For a very thick labneh, I like to strain for at least 8 hours with a folded, two-layer cheesecloth; with the yogurt strainer, I like to strain for 24 hours. It depends a bit on your tools, but a 5-hour strain is a good place to start—you can always stir some of the whey back in if it becomes too thick for your taste.  

13. Save the whey in a separate container and use it in smoothies, baked goods, or soups. 

14. Store both the yogurt and the whey in the fridge and enjoy!

The milk carton’s best-by date is the best indicator of how long the yogurt and whey stay good. I typically eat it for up to 10 days after I make it, if it lasts that long. 

Notes: 

• If you’re not planning on immediately beginning another batch, you can freeze the starter yogurt (and then thaw in the refrigerator before using). I’ve found that it can die around the month-mark, so I tend to just refrigerate it in between batches or start again with a new store-bought yogurt. 

• I bought a high-low alarm food thermometer from ChefAlarm that I love dearly. You certainly don’t need one, but if you make yogurt regularly you will find it convenient. Be sure to buy a high-low alarm, a high-only alarm won’t do you any good here. 

Example yogurt-making schedule, for a shorter (9-hour) ferment:

• Day 1, 9am: Heat milk and begin inoculation

• Day 1, 10am: Yogurt ferments in Instant Pot

• Day 1, 8pm: Remove from Instant Pot, cover, and move to refrigerator

• Day 2, morning: Strain

• Day 2, 6pm: Move strained yogurt to containers 

Example yogurt-making schedule, for a longer (14-hour) ferment:

• Day 1, 7pm: Heat milk and begin inoculation

• Day 1, 8pm: Yogurt ferments in Instant Pot

• Day 2, 10am: Remove from Instant Pot, cover, and move to refrigerator

• Day 2, 6pm: Strain

• Day 3, morning: Move strained yogurt to containers