Slow Cooker Yogurt

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Making your own dairy products at home is a great first step towards a more self-sufficient life. Proteins have been increasing in price over the past five years and even if you can’t raise a meat animal you can still easily make cheese, yogurt and butter at home. Below is how you can make Greek slow cooker yogurt overnight while you are sleeping.

Ingredients

  • 1 Gallon Milk
  • 1/2 cup Greek yogurt (needed to start the culture)

Gather your supplies

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Pour milk into a double boiler

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Slowly heat to 180 degrees

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Move thermometer to slow cooker

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Pour milk into slow cooker

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Preheat oven to 200

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Allow milk to cool to 115 degrees

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Mix 1/2 cup of warm milk and 1/2 cup of Greek yogurt

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Mix it into the milk in slow cooker

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Put lid on slow cooker and set on 2 towels

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Wrap it tight in the towels

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Turn the oven off and set the slow cooker into oven

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8-10 hours later you have yogurt

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Set in the fridge overnight to firm up

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In the morning line a strainer with a coffee filter

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Strain the yogurt

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Separate into mason jars

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You will get about 3.5 quarts of yogurt out of a gallon of milk and once you have the initial batch going you will never have to buy Greek yogurt again; just use your current batch to kick start the next one. Some people will just use the slow cooker for the whole process of heating and cooling but if you bring the milk up to 180 degrees too fast it can impart a stronger sour taste to the yogurt.

Another method is to ladle the cooled milk/yogurt mixture directly into canning jars and set them in the oven so the milk converts to yogurt right in the jars. I have had mixed results doing it like that but give it a shot and see if it works for you. This does create a lot of yogurt at one time which has about a week’s shelf life, so if you don’t eat a lot of yogurt you can freeze it for later usage. Now go make some slow cooker yogurt!

Homemade Living: Home Dairy with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Make Cheese, Yogurt, Butter & More

Ashley English provides a feast of information for dairy-loving foodies! She guides readers through all the essentials in four topic-specific sections: Butter & Ghee, Cultured Dairy Products, Cheese, and Ice Cream. Each primer offers need-to-know facts with gorgeous photos, troubleshooting tips, profiles, and Ashley’s own roster of recipes.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I do this whole process in the slow cooker. If your slow cooker heats up too quick, use coins to raise the crock up off the heating element. Cooling the milk will take a bit longer in a crock than in a pan. I put the crock in a large cooler with a pan of boiling water rather than in the oven.