Cheap and EASY home made yoghurt

There are a few recipes on the board for making your own yoghurt, but dare I suggest all this messing about with thermometers and saucepans is quite unnecessary once you have calibrated your system.

Let me explain - you need to do 3 things;

(1) Heat the milk or half and half to kill all the bad bacteria - don't boil it 85 - 90 C/185 - 195 F is fine. YOU CAN USE YOUR MICROWAVE lol - a bit of trial and error here and you can just use the timer after the first time - with my old microwave it takes 11 minutes on high to heat a litre (roughly 1 US quart) - obviously this will vary with your microwave (a bit) and the amount of milk you use (a lot).

(2) You need to cool it to 44 C/ 110 F - YOU CAN USE YOUR FRIDGE lol - the same deal try it until all you need is the timer. (about 35 minutes in my fridge for the litre (so long as the door isn't opened and closed a lot)

(3) Then all you need is to mix in a spoon of the old batch - or a spoon of store bought with live cultures - and insulate it for at least 4 hours although I always leave it overnight and sometimes forget it for 24 hours. I have a glass bottle which fits in an insulated sleeve with a lid - made by Decor in Australia - but any form of insulation is fine. If you are going to use a thermos I would suggest you may want to cool it a bit closer to the ideal blood temperature as a thermos would be very efficient - but again a trial or two will tell.

The larger the quantity the easier this is - and it lasts for ages in the fridge - if you let it.

Hope this helps.

Malcolm