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Yogurt-making at home, Part III: Gather your supplies
(Edited May 2023)
This is the third in a series of posts about yogurt-making. In the last post, we explored different methods of incubation — holding the yogurt at 110 degrees. Regardless of which method you choose, you’ll need these things:
Milk: You have a variety of options here. Your best consistency will come from whole milk, but many people enjoy yogurt as a low-fat food, and so you can certainly use 2 percent, 1 percent or skim milk. If you do use a lower-fat milk, you may want to think about ways to thicken the final product, and we’ll get into those in our next post.
Vegan milks (such as soy or almond) can also be used, but if you do, you’ll get best results by using a starter culture that has been especially designed for them; look online for “vegan yogurt starter culture” or something similar, or check your local health food store. Vegan yogurt is not going to be as thick as milk-based yogurt, so you’ll want to look at thickening options even more in this case.
I have described the yogurt-making process that begins with scalding the milk. Some of the new generation of people who use the Instant Pot to make yogurts now skip that scalding step by using ultra-filtered Fairlife milk. It’s referred to as the “no-boil” method. That’s a little bit of a misnomer. When you’re scalding the milk, you don’t actually bring it to a boil, but for some reason the Instant Pot’s digital readout…
