Yogurt Anyone?

Ok so not everything on the blog is going to be Halloween related of course...its my blog and I will do what I please...  and I am really pleased with my homemade Yogurt.

I made a 1/2 gallon of yogurt last night in crock pot, its so easy.... I got the instructions from the following Our Life Simplified website, I forgot to take pictures but my yogurt looked just like their pics and my crockpot looked to be the same one, so I borrowed their pic!  When I was done it looked exactly like the above.


Ingredients:
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• 1/2 gallon of milk
• 8 ounces of plain yogurt with active cultures (let it get to room temp). I use 2 small 6 ounce yogurt containers and mix it all in...what the heck!
• Crockpot (I like the ones with the removable pot insert)
• Thermometer (temperature control is a must!0
• 1/2 cup non-fat dry milk (NOT instant milk.... this is for extra protein and thickness)

Steps:
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1. Put milk in crockpot
2. Put crockpot on high setting to 180F
3. Then lightly uncover crockpot and turn off crockpot and let cool down to 110F
4. Then at 110F take a couple of cups of the cooked milk and in seperate container mix in the plain yogurt (used as starter) and 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk, stir well and then mix back into the crockpot
5. Put lid back on, wrap in beach towel or blanket to help insulate the crockpot
6. Place in oven and turn on oven light
7. After 8-10 hours (longer more tangier the yogurt) remove from oven
8. Uncover, (if successful and careful with your temps during the process) and you will see all sorts of yogurty goodness.  
9. There may be yellowish fluid on top, that is whey, it is perfectly ok and does not mean anything bad has happened.
10. I like a thicker creamier greek style yogurt, so what I do is get paper towels and lightly lay it on top to absord the whey (people cook with it and all....check the internets). Whey is what they make protein shakes with.
11. For greek yogurt line a strainer/collander with coffee filters or cheesecloth and strain for a couple of hours or so (no more than 2....remember it will still be "yogurting" and the longer it is doing that, the more tangier it is so to speed up the process you can place a lightly weighted plate on top of the cheesecloth.
12. Place in sealed plastic containers and refrigerate for 10 days.  After that its time to make fresh batch.  You can use the yogurt from your own batch, the cultures should still be active.  

You can use fruit from jams or preserves or fresh fruit mixed in, if you want a more savory topping you can mix in spices and fresh herbs.  With the thicker greek style yogurst you can make a cream cheese like product great for spreading on toast or for dips.

Read the labels on commercial yogurt.  Even the organic stuff has all sorts of crap in it.  Here you can control the amount of sugar (Yoplait has as much sugar as 2 candy bars or 2 sodas) and other ingredients.


So the price of 1/2 gallon of milk is like $2.50 or so, the plain yogurt is about $1.50, so for $4.00 I got a half gallon of fresh and healthy yogurt.   At the cheapest for crappy yogurt at about $1 a container to get the equivalent amount of yogourt it will cost you $11