Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Homemade Yogurt: A Tale of Eventual Success


After years of hesitancy, I decided to overcome my fear of failure and get serious about making yogurt.  So last month I bought a jug of organic milk.  Then it went sour before I did anything with it.  Strike one.

But last week, images from inspiring tutorials (including Alicia's) beckoned me to try making homemade yogurt again.  I bought a gallon of fresh local milk and finally began the yogurt making process.  After placing two empty Mason jars and lids in a pot, I began boiling away.  And though I forgot to save the web page with the instructions, I forged ahead with my plan.  Thankfully my More With Less cookbook contained an outline of the steps for me to follow.

I made do with this meat thermometer.
The biggest snag I hit was cracking a Mason jar.  I poured cold milk into a 200 degree Mason jar and...pop!  Out flowed the milk as the shards gave way.  Luckily, I had another empty jar around to serve in its place.  Lessons learned:


  1. Let the sterilized jars cool before filling them with cold milk;
  2. Heat jars gradually.


Hours later, my resolve paid off when I pulled these out of our big blue cooler (imagine them both full):

The following morning I spooned up thick homemade yogurt into each child's bowl, added honey, and waited for their reactions.   Everyone requested seconds, which was a good sign.  Even my husband wanted some.

I'll be heating up more Mason jars again soon I expect.  My kids have eaten many, many gallons of yogurt in their lifetimes; I only wish I had tried making it sooner.  No one in our household drinks dairy milk at home, but yogurt we down by the quart.



3 comments:

Alicia said...

Julia, this is fabulous! I was smiling the whole time I read your post, EXCEPT for the part where the Mason jar broke (because that's so tragic!). I'm so glad you all liked the yogurt. I was planning on making some this week, but I'm all out of honey. Time to call the honey man (yes, I really have a honey man...maybe I should do a blog post on that sometime)!

Anonymous said...

Yay! I love homemade yogurt. Although I'm still trying to figure out how to get kids to eat it without a humongous mess!

Zion said...

Yum I love yogurt. Good for you for not giving up! BTW I love Sixpence None The Richer and I sang Trust and my brother played guitar at my church when I was 15. Reading your profile brought back the memory.