Easy Homemade Yogurt (WithOUT an Instant Pot!)

By Erika Alino

Simple method for thick, creamy, delicious homemade yogurt.

My husband eats a LOT of yogurt. I realized that it’s significantly cheaper to spend a couple dollars on a gallon of milk than to pay over $6 for just one container of yogurt. So, I set out to learn how to make it myself. We don’t have an Instant Pot or crock pot with a yogurt setting, so it had to be done on the stovetop.

After a few learning curves (once I even forgot to add the culture in), the process of making homemade yogurt from scratch became pretty simple. It’s healthy, inexpensive, and delicious, and I love that we make it ourselves.

However, there were a few problems with my initial system:

1. The yogurt was much thinner than the creamy Greek-style we prefer. We started using cheesecloth to strain it, which worked, but only amplified the next problem.
2. The process of pouring the milk from the pot into jars to incubate, and then into a bowl to strain before scooping it into another jar to store was WAY too much work.
3. Scooping yogurt out of a Mason jar – even the wide mouth jars – is a pain. The spoon handle gets messy from the sides of the jar, and we were still wasting quite a bit at the bottom.

Enter our streamlined, easy method of making homemade yogurt.

It was actually my husband’s suggestion. Instead of pouring the yogurt into jars after the stovetop steps, we could just incubate it right in the pot. Brilliant! We simply put a lid on the pot and place it in a cooler in a hot place, let it sit overnight, then dump the pot of yogurt into our DIY straining contraption: a large colander lined with cheesecloth set over a bowl to catch the whey. We put that in the fridge to drain before transferring the strained yogurt into a large glass bowl to store. It’s a dump-and-go method that takes very little effort, and our large glass storage bowl is much easier to get yogurt out of than the Mason jars.

The Simple Method for Delicious Homemade Yogurt:

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon of milk
• 3 tablespoons of plain yogurt with live, active cultures. (This batch of yogurt will work for next time.)

Tools:

Steps:

1. Heat the milk to 180℉
   • Pour a gallon of milk into a large pot on the stove.
   • Turn the burner to medium heat. Whisk often so the milk doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pot.
   • Heat the milk until it reaches 180℉. This typically takes about half an hour. Check the temperature frequently, as it heats up more quickly towards the end.

1. Cool the milk to 115℉
   • Once it reaches 180℉, remove the pot from the heat and let it cool to about 115℉. This can take a while, usually about an hour or so.
2. Add the culture
   • Once the milk has cooled to 115℉, add three tablespoons of plain yogurt to the milk pot.
   • Whisk the milk thoroughly for several minutes to fully incorporate the culture.
3. Incubate
   • Cover the pot with a piece of aluminum foil, then put the lid on. (The aluminum foil is optional to help protect from contaminants.)
   • Incubate the milk in a warm spot. We use a cooler for temperature regulation. See notes for more details.
   • Let the milk incubate in a warm spot for about 8-14 hours.

1. Strain for Thicker Greek-Style Yogurt
   • Once the yogurt is done incubating, dump the contents into a colander lined with cheesecloth resting over a large bowl to catch the whey.
   • Place it in the refrigerator for a few hours, until the whey has drained.
2. Store
   • Dump the strained yogurt into a storage container. (We find it easiest to use a large glass bowl with a lid.)
   • If the yogurt seems too thick, stir some of the whey back in until it’s the right consistency.

Notes:

• Any dairy milk should work; we currently use store-bought skim milk.
• The best pot to use would be stainless steel, which does not harbor bacteria on its surface.
• Whisk in the culture for several minutes, longer than you think you have to. Whisking well seems to help the yogurt come out smooth and creamy.
• The milk needs to incubate in a warm location. In the summertime, it’s hot enough that we can place the cooler in the garage and incubate the milk in there.
• If you don’t have a hot enough place to incubate, one option that has provided consistent results is to add enough warm water to the cooler up to about halfway up the pot. The water should be about 110℉.

If doing the hot water method, I add the hot water to the cooler as the milk is cooling. The first few times, I’d boil a pot of water and mix it with tap water until I had enough water at the right temperature. But now, I march my cooler into the bathroom and fill it straight from the tub – another of my husband’s brilliant suggestions. I use a thermometer to test the water, and once it gets close to 115℉, I fill the cooler just a few inches so that it will reach about halfway up the pot. (I wouldn’t use the same thermometer as the one for the milk, or I would wash it before using it in the milk again.)

Final Thoughts

One of our favorite ways to eat yogurt is as a dessert – mix in honey, cinnamon, granola, chocolate chips, and some fresh or dried fruit; it’s delicious!

Our house can go through two batches of yogurt a week, so having a simple process is important. This recipe makes 40-50 ounces of yogurt after being strained – which is about one and a half of the containers typically found at the grocery store. It’s definitely worth the cost savings! (Side note: half a gallon of milk at our commissary is twice as expensive by the ounce than a whole gallon. Something to keep in mind!)