Homemade yoghurt

This recipe was given to me by a friend who grew up with her mother making it this way. Now she's left home, she makes her own & continues the family tradition.

The day she gave me the recipe, we'd been shopping together & she'd found 2L milk cartons reduced to $0.99 in the dairy section. She bought 2 of them, and used both of them that night to make up a new batch of yoghurt for her family.

Margaret's family yoghurt recipe:

Use full cream milk

Rinse saucepan, tip water out, don’t dry – this stops milk from sticking;

Pour in milk;

Heat on low/medium temperature, you don’t want it to bubble up too quickly;

When milk rises (just before it spills out) turn off the temperature;

Transfer pot somewhere it will stay warm;

Put blanket under pot, ready to wrap around;

When you can put your pinkie finger in the milk, swirl it around & count to 10, the temperature is right to continue. A little warm is okay, if it’s too cold, reheat the milk;

You need some real yoghurt as a starter. Best if you can get from someone who already makes their own, but if you choose carefully at the shop, you can find some suitable, if you choose one without gelatin in it. After your first batch, just save some at the end for making future batches;

For 2 litre of milk, use about 300ml of yoghurt (a bit more than a standard cup);

Put the yoghurt into a jug, spoon some of the hot milk over it & stir together. Don’t put cold yoghurt straight into the pot of hot milk;

Add your yoghurt/milk mix to the pot of milk, stir in well, dissolving the yoghurt in the milk, put the lid on the pot;

Wrap pot in blanket – cold day – 3 or 4 blankets, hot day – 2 blankets. Blankets are doubled, so 2 blankets = 4 layers;

Cover whole saucepan;

Leave for six hours;

Take off blanket & check – should be jiggery (or jelly like)*;

Don’t refrigerate immediately, leave it to cool more on the bench, for maybe half an hour;

Don’t break into it immediately, leave it a day in the fridge untouched, it will set better;

If it tastes a little sour, it gets better each time you make it. It probably won’t taste great the first time if you make with a commercial yoghurt, but it improves each time.

* if it hasn’t set, take the whole saucepan, put it in a pan of boiling water (like a bain marie?), it should set then. Then cover with the blankets for a few more hours.

By one of strange coincidences that happen so frequently, the day I finally got around to typing up this recipe neatly & posting it here, Rhonda posted her recipe for yoghurt on her blog Down To Earth.