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Raw Milk Yogurt

Saturday, December 6, 2008 by alana

I’ve been making yogurt for about a year now, and I thinking I’m ready to put the system down on paper (or screen if you will). This is my yogurt maker.

It is a Eurocuisine YM100. You can buy it from Amazon. It costs about forty bucks, and trust me it’s definitely worth the ten bucks extra (over the thirty dollar YM80) for the automatic timer. I also suggest the you shell out the extra twenty bucks for a set of extra jars. Otherwise you have to wait for all the yogurt to be eaten in order to make your next batch. You also need a candy thermometer.

Many people make yogurt with nothing but a mason jar and a wood stove, but I just never could make that happen, and frankly, I’m a little in love with my yogurt maker.

OK, now you have your supplies. For one batch of yogurt, this is what you will need:

4 1/4 cups of milk (I use raw milk, but use what you like)
6 oz. plain fatty yogurt (more on this later)
4 T nonfat dry milk powder

So let’s talk about these ingredients. Because I have access to some pretty wicked awesome raw milk, this is what I use. And the method that I will lay out for you is different from the one that comes in your yogurt maker instructions, because I don’t want to heat it so much that I will kill all the good things in the raw milk. If you are using raw milk, you’ve already made this decision and you know all the things like how you should be absolutely sure of the perfection and cleanliness of the farm, etc., etc, so I won’t go into that. This method, however, will also work with pasteurized milk, so don’t stress it if that is what you want to use.
As for the yogurt in the recipe, this is your starter. If you buy a little thing of yogurt, you can use it as a starter, and then you can use one of that batch as your next starter. This is as far as you can go with it. So one little cup of yogurt will get you two cycles of starter. I have found that the absolute best starter is full fat Greek yogurt. It makes a huge difference.
You also need nonfat dry milk. Organic valley makes a decent one, or sometimes you can find it in the bulk section at the health food store. If you’re going to use the low heat method that I set out here, you must include dry milk or else your yogurt will be runny. If you don’t mind runny yogurt, by all means leave it out.

So here’s the process. Heat your milk at a low temperature until it hits 110 degrees. This happens pretty quickly, so I’d stick close to the stove.


Empty your starter yogurt into a mixing bowl or large measuring cup. Add about 1c of warm milk, and the 4 T of dry milk. Whisk until fairly smooth. Don’t worry if there are a few lumps.


Add this mixture back into the rest of the warm milk. Whisk until slightly frothy.

Pour entire mixture into a large measuring cup for easy pouring. Fill jars up to the top.


Leave the lids of the containers off, but put the lid of the machine on. Set the timer for eleven hours. Put the machine somewhere where it won’t be nudged or disturbed.

After the eleven hours are up, put the lids on the jars and put them into the fridge. The yogurt will be ready in two hours.

A note on flavors: My experience has been that with homemade yogurt, it is best to make it plain. When more variables get introduced into the situation, the cultures can get a little screwy and sometimes even up and die on you. So make it plain, and then add yummy things to it afterwards.

Filed Under: breakfast, Home Dairy, yogurt Tagged With: yogurt

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Comments

  1. Joanna says

    Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 1:17 am

    this is so cool!! i’d love to make my own yogurt, but i don’t have a yogurt maker.

  2. Lisa says

    Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Oooh! Lovely! Questions…
    – how long can the yogurt last in the fridge?
    – do you need to have more ingredients for each starter, or do you sometimes use your previous batch as a starter?

  3. alana says

    Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    I have found that the yogurt is good for at least two weeks. I can use one from a previous batch only once as a starter. So I have to buy a new starter every two batches. I have tried extending the starter, but after the first batch the cultures seem to weaken, and the yogurt doesn’t work out as well.

  4. liz from north carolina says

    Monday, November 29, 2010 at 12:33 am

    I used to make yogurt when I lived in Belize…with nothing but a big, old pot wrapped in beach towels. My recipe was pretty close to yours. I got my starter from a Creole cook…no commercial yogurt back then.

  5. pmcshane80 says

    Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 11:56 pm

    hi! my mom has been making yogurt for years, using the dry milk method. a couple of years ago, her trusty ol' recipe was yielding really runny yogurt. she tried all kinds of substitutions and realized non-organic dry milk was the culprit. she's always been… thrifty. so it's not really in her nature to buy organic. but she's now convinced that non-organic stuff kills the culture. anti-biotics maybe?

  6. Susan says

    Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 5:50 pm

    Hi Alana,
    First, thank you so much for your down-to-earth approach – it’s like a breath of fresh air!

    Second…have you tried making yogurt with goat’s milk?? I’d like to try a less lactose method…any thoughts?

    Thanks!

    • alana says

      Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 8:30 pm

      Hi Susan! I haven’t actually made goat milk yogurt, but you can certainly follow the same process, and I know many who have. The only thing that I know about goat yogurt is that it tends to be a bit runnier, so you might want to add an additional coagulant like nonfat dry milk powder or tapioca starch.

  7. Theresa says

    Monday, July 23, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    Hi Alana,

    Does heating up the raw milk kill the healthy enzymes in it?

    Thanks!

    • alana says

      Tuesday, July 24, 2012 at 12:06 pm

      Hi Theresa! Normally, you’d head milk to 185 degrees before making yogurt, and that absolutely will kill all the good enzymes. But 110 (as far as I’ve been taught) is the magic temperature to support both the living enzymes in the culture AND the milk.

  8. Kara says

    Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 7:31 pm

    I just got your lovely book as a birthday gift, and I read it cover-to-cover. I haven’t made anything out of it yet, but I have tons of recipes marked to try and will do so ASAP.

    I wanted to post here because I make my own yogurt (without a yogurt maker), and your book is the only place I have ever read that *life changing* tip about icing the pot. I cook and bake a lot and read a lot of recipes and books and have never seen that advice before. And wow, does it work. So, thanks for that, and for many delicious meals to come!

  9. Robin says

    Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 9:04 pm

    Hey Alana, I was at your Ocean House class and an wanting to try the crock pot yogurt since I don’t have a yogurt maker but when I try to get the recipe it sends me to the Raw Milk Yogurt recipe instead. Not sure why…

    • alana says

      Friday, April 26, 2013 at 3:16 pm

      Hi Robin! So sorry about that. Here’s the right post 🙂
      http://www.eatingfromthegroundup.com/2012/05/crock-pot-greek-yogurt/

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    Sunday, October 19, 2014 at 10:18 am

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  11. Laura says

    Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 2:34 am

    What are the benefits of using a yogurt maker as opposed to just using jars on the counter?

    • alana says

      Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 1:06 pm

      Hi Laura, The goal is to keep the milk as close to 110°F as possible while it cultures. So an electric or insulated yogurt maker will help keep that temperature up. That being said, it’s possible to rig up many other ways to do it, whether you’re wrapping the jars in a blanket, keeping them in a cooler, in an oven with a pilot light, etc.

      • Laura says

        Wednesday, December 10, 2014 at 3:00 pm

        Thanks for the quick reply!!! That makes sense. I had seen another recipe where the jars were just left on the counter with no attempt at keeping the temp up, so I was confused. Thanks 🙂

Trackbacks

  1. crock pot greek yogurt | Eating From the Ground Up says:
    Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 11:56 pm

    […] I talk about my yogurt maker, I usually encounter one of two […]

  2. Making Monday-Greek Yogurt says:
    Monday, June 17, 2013 at 4:37 pm

    […] recipe to fit your needs.  I owe the original inspiration for making my own yogurt to one woman, Alana Chernila.  Please visit her wonderful blog, and buy her life-changing book, “The Homemade […]

  3. Netflix and Tuberculosis | says:
    Monday, October 14, 2013 at 5:23 pm

    […] yogurt. I followed a recipe by Alana Chernila that is similar to the one that she posts here: http://www.eatingfromthegroundup.com/2008/12/raw-milk-yogurt/ The end result of my yogurt project smells and looks like the stuff you buy in the stores, but […]


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