Experiments - or making Yogurt in a Crockpot

While visiting a Ukrainian mother and talking about food - I mentioned that Saphira adores yogurt. You want her to eat something, you douse it with yogurt. (We joke that she is all set for India). Well, the mother wanted to know if I was making my own.

"No," I said.

"Why," she asked, "or are you lazy?"

I explained I could find sugar-free plain yogurt that was tasty and saw no reason to buy yet another machine to make it. Honestly, I've been quite skeptical of the growing popularity of yogurt makers here in Kiev. Some of my friends have them and when it comes to babies - this is always a question that comes up. Still, this was the first time that I'd been called lazy for it.

"Why do you make yogurt instead of buying it?" I asked.

She explained that it is for the pro-biotic effects - that you get the most good bacteria and that the stuff in the store might not even have anything living in it anyway.

Still not convinced, I nodded.

Fast forward a week when we met up again. Our visit fell over lunch and so she shared some yogurt with us and I shared some of Saphira's cutlets and sirnik with them. Saphira gobbled up the yogurt. I mean, she loves yogurt - but this was obviously something extraordinary. Skeptical as I was, I couldn't deny her response - so the research began.

1) Economic cost of yogurt making: Despite the readily available cheap and yummy yogurt - making it yourself ends up saving you HALF the cost. Even if you factor in the average cost of a machine, you break even around 32 liters - or in about 27 weeks for my household.

2) A little searching and I discovered that I could make yogurt without a machine - in fact I could make it in my crockpot. Now there are recipes out there for making yogurt in a crockpot that really are pretty high maintenance - you have to do all this preheating and wrap a towel around it overnight - blah. I wanted something that was an EQUAL substitute for a yogurt maker - so I read some other ways to make yogurt and here is what I came up with:

Easy Yogurt in a Crockpot

Materials: 1 Crockpot, preferably with a keep warm setting; 1 serving of natural yogurt with live bacteria or a yogurt culture starter, glass jars that fit in your crock pot, At least 1 liter of milk - if you use more you may need to increase the yogurt and starter you use and add more jars, a cooking thermometer that registers temperatures from 80 to 200F

Prep work: You should test your keep warm function the day before to ensure that it won't heat your yogurt too high. I did this by pouring hot water into the crockpot and leaving it on keep warm for a few hours and checking it periodically. I did find that on my crockpot, if left for a long time (3+ hours) the temperature will rise - so I took this into account when making my yogurt.

Instructions:

1) Pour hot water into your crockpot - about half way full - check the temp to ensure it is not higher than 100F - Turn your crockpot on to its lowest setting.

2) Heat your milk on high in the microwave a few minutes - you don't want it to boil but you do want it to reach a temp of around 180 to kill things - check the temp periodically with the thermometer and stir the milk. This process took about 10 minutes. Alternatively you can do this on the stove.

3) Allow milk to cool to 110 - 100F. (I Covered it and put it in the fridge)

4) Mix in your yogurt or yogurt culture

5) Fill your clean jars with milk mixture

6) Place the jars in the crockpot - make sure the water in the crockpot does not get into the yogurt - remove water if necessary

7) insert your thermometer, close the lid and go do your thing - the yogurt should be ready in about 3 hours.

I checked mine periodically to ensure the temperature was fine and turned it off after one hour while we went on a walk. It stayed off the remainder of the time and at 3.5 hours the yogurt was a lovely soft set and mild. Other sites say that a more tart yogurt can be achieved by leaving the yogurt for more time. During the remaining two hours - the temp had dropped 10 degrees - not bad at all since the lid doesn't close fully due to the height of the thermometer!

I'm very pleased with myself - not only can I now say I'm not lazy, but I start saving 50% on yogurt immediately - without buying another machine to clutter up the kitchen!