Yogurt research!

[which_chick]

I've been doing Chobani plain yogurt for breakfast but dang, it's like six dollars a container. That's mighty steep. I really don't like ordinary plain yogurt, though. It's not very creamy and I don't like the watery stuff.



I did indeed. The instructions for how to get from "regular" yogurt to "greek" yogurt are pretty straightforward once you've waded through the utter screens of SEO bullshit and skipped the Personal Narrative that is apparently obligatory for recipe websites these days.

Here's the instructions.

Ready?

Sure you're ready?

Put it in a cloth and strain some of the whey out of it. This is like how you render juice from berries or grapes. Same fucking idea.

How creamy do you like your yogurt? That's when you stop straining.

I was concerned that there might be more to it than that, but nope. You just strain it in a cloth. It drips pretty easily on its own.

If you save the containers from the yogurt, you can re-use them for your strained yogurt. I wound up with about 1 and 1/4 containers of strained yogurt.

I am not sure if this represents a cost savings given the yield, more research is needed. (The grocery was out of the cheap plain yogurt so I had to use dannon which is pricier. Ask again in a week.) It might be a cost savings with store-brand plain yogurt. Not sure it's a cost savings over store-brand greek yogurt, which I have not tried. Research continues.

Comments

[unicornduke]

I find the Stonyfield plain whole milk is on the thicker side and generally is only $5 per quart but yeah, making greek yogurt is easy peasy. Major cost savings is in fully making yogurt, which I find isn't too annoying.

I usually make a half gallon at a time because I found I had more issues when I was making a gallon at a time. Half gallon + 3/4 cup starter = 2 quarts of yogurt since you lose a little bit in steam while heating. Even if I splurge and get the nice milk, it's something like half the price or a third of buying it. Only tricky thing is timing out having enough left to use as starter and keeping an eye on it as you heat it up. But I also know it isn't for everyone haha.

[which_chick]

I've done yogurt (in a cooler, which was really a 'warmer' for yogurt purposes) before but mostly in the summer when it's not so hard to keep it warm enough. Wintertime ambient "house" temperature is not yogurt-friendly. My instant pot has a yogurt setting. I might see how that goes.

[unicornduke]

The other apartment used to be warm enough that I would just wrap the yogurt pot in a towel and it would be fine. If you have a stove with a pilot light, that would also work but yeah instant pot!