Making my own yoghurt

Glad

we eat lot's of yoghurt and mainly the dearer ones as the taste is so much nicer
would it be cost effective to make my own?
do I need any special equipment?

Rikki

I'm concidering buying the yoghurt maker from Lakeland to make my own.

I will be interested in what everyone has to say too..

[Deleted User]

I have done the lot with yoghurt-making and have the t shirt. In the `old` days (25 years ago) I made it the basic way with live yoghurt, body-temp milk and jars in an airing cupboard. I tried a thermos flask with variable results. Then I had an electric yoghurt maker with small pots and now I use the easy yo method. I did the first and third methods for years. Easy yo is definitely the best for guaranteed and delicious results. It is beautiful each and every time and I also like the fact that the bacteria content is not hit and miss. I have at least one easy yo pot in the fridge all the time and in summer I have two, usually one plain and one flavoured

black-saturn

I've looked at the mixture of those though and they look extremely expensive. Surely it's cheaper to buy a yogurt?

[Deleted User]

800 ml (full tub) of flavoured easy yo weighs 900g and cost me £1.24

That seems to be about half the cost of bog-standard tesco yoghurt, which is measured in grams

rach1973

I have an Electric Lakeland Yoghurt Maker which makes a litre of yoghurt at a time.
The UHT Milk cost 50p a litre, 2 tablespoons of Dried Milk Powder and every 6 lots of yoghurt I make I buy a fresh starter which costs 37p.

My boys love it with a splash of Crusha and I love it due to the fact I was spending £5 a week on yoghurt for them.

Go for it.

thriftlady_2

I make yogurt exactly as rach1973 with the Lakeland yog maker.I reckon it costs me 90p to make a litre of thick, creamy yogurt with a lovely mild taste and less when I use my HM yog as a starter.BTW you can freeze yogurt for using as a starter in 2 tbsp quantities,this is useful if your consumption is slow as yogurt for starters needs to be v.fresh.

I'm the only one who really likes yogurt in my house,so I do find a litre quite a lot and think I will start making half quantities to make it cost effective as its not saving me money if it gets chucked away.

Ted_Hutchinson

If you search this forum there are several previous yoghurt threads.
We have the yoghurt maker on every other day as I like like semi-skimmed yoghurt and my partner will only eat full cream yoghurt.

But we use the same yoghurt maker with little pots. They are still available but now seem to have 7 pots with blue lids and are round rather than rectangular with 5/6 pots.
It makes just 1.2 litres of yoghurt but if you wanted you could just make one litre and not fill the pots to the rim. That would mean you would have space to stir in the fruit/nuts/flavouring.

So seven pots of yoghurt cost 45p for box of UHT. 2 tablespoons of skimmed milk powder and the 13 watts of electricity for 5 hrs. I suppose you should also add in the cost of the starter yoghurt. I use a lidls/aldis probiotic yoghurt as a starter but have used muller healthy balence as a starter some time ago. You use your last yoghurt to start the next batch so the initial starter lasts almost indefinitely. We tend only to need a new one when we come back from a holiday etc otherwise you can tell if the starter needs replacing if you latest batch has a slimey texture or is a bit sour or runny. I've also mixed into my starter mix, a probiotic yoghurt drink and that turned out all right as well.

I should perhaps have pointed out one set of jars is in fact small jamjars rather than originals.

squeaky

Glad wrote:

we eat lot's of yoghurt and mainly the dearer ones as the taste is so much nicer
would it be cost effective to make my own?
do I need any special equipment?

These earlier threads might be of some help:-


yoghurt recipes
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=42804

how to make yoghurt at home
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=83473

Yoghurt - Easiyo or make your own?
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=71520

meadowcat

rach1973 wrote:

I have an Electric Lakeland Yoghurt Maker which makes a litre of yoghurt at a time.
The UHT Milk cost 50p a litre, 2 tablespoons of Dried Milk Powder and every 6 lots of yoghurt I make I buy a fresh starter which costs 37p.

My boys love it with a splash of Crusha and I love it due to the fact I was spending £5 a week on yoghurt for them.

Go for it.

If you use UHT milk, do you have to boil it and then let it cool down, or can you just heat it to the required temperature?

thriftlady_2

No you don't need to heat it, as its already been heated.That's the best thing about it IMO-just pour it in the machine with the starter and some dried milk if you want it richer-tasting.