making homemade yogurt in dehydrator

This weekend we decided to try making yogurt at home. To me, this isn't as much making yogurt as it is making yogurt into MORE yogurt, since you need to have some yogurt already to do this.

2 quarts milk

3/4 cup plain yogurt with live cultures

First you heat 2 quarts of milk (any kind of milk works) to 200 degrees fahrenheit. This part takes forever. The longest time is between 180 and 200 degrees for some reason. Also for some reason, I love the smell of super warm milk. As soon as it passed 150, I was in scent heaven. I did not use a double boiler because I have the patience of a flea but it also means constant stirring to prevent burning. I did fine without it, but it's not stupid to use one.

Get your dehydrator warming up to 120 degrees at this point. I also put my jars in the dehydrator now to get them warm.

As soon as it hit 200 degrees, you place the whole pan in a sink full of cold water to start dropping the temperature down to about 120 degrees. This happens fairly quickly, so have your yogurt starter ready. I put my 3/4 cup plain yogurt in at around 130 degrees because the yogurt was cold and I wasn't sure how fast it would drop the overall temp.

Once you hit 120 degrees, you place it in containers ( I use pint sized mason jars ) and pop it into dehydrator for 4 to 8 hours. The amount of time is dependent on how thick/creamy you like your yogurt. I checked mine at 6 hours and left it in for the whole 8 hours. I dried some banana chips and tomatoes while this was going to make best use of energy being spent having the dehydrator run. I know it's a nominal amount of energy, but I feel better making use of everything that I can.

It turned out really great. The flavor is also based on the type of starter yogurt that you use. I used greek yogurt. You may also get a skin on the top of your yogurt. I mixed mine in, but if you are turned off by it, you can toss it.

You will also notice that you created some whey. This can be separated by straining it. You can then use your whey to make bread. Or you can mix it in. I mixed mine in. 

I used some honey to sweeten my newly born yogurt and mixed in some canned cherries from this summer.

It turned out delicious. Even Hubby loved it.

Did I mention you could use this to make your own smoothies?