The recipe:
Crock Pot Yogurt
- 8 cups (or a half gallon) of milk. I use 2%, whole will work fine, but I wouldn't go with skim
- 1/2 cup store bought yogurt with the living stuff...once you make your own, you can use a 1/2 cup of that as a starter for the next batch.
- a crock pot
- heavy towel
Next, unplug the crock pot and turn it off to let the milk cool for 3 hours. Once the time is up, your warm milk will be the perfect temperature to host the live cultures in your yogurt.
Add the 1/2 cup of store bought or your previous homemade yogurt to the crock pot milk and stir thoroughly. I have used flavored yogurt, but I really didn't notice a difference in the final product. It's better to mix fruit in per serving once it's done.
Wrap your heavy towel around the crock pot for insulation purposes and leave it alone for 8 hours or overnight. Yesterday, I started my yogurt around noon and left it completely overnight wrapped in it's towel until morning. It turned out delicious.
Homemade yogurt with granola and honey
Yogurt tips and tricks: stir fresh fruit or jelly or honey or syrup into each serving, freeze in ice cube trays to make a quick popsicle, use frozen cubes in the blender with fruit to make a smoothie, try it as a recipe substitution, strain it overnight through cheesecloth to make Greek style yogurt, add powdered milk for extra vitamin D, add unflavored gelatin (2T) to the batch to make it a little thicker.
Dr. Mom tip: Our pediatrician recommends feeding Activia yogurt to the family when a housemate is barfing. We have since evolved to giving the frozen ice cube tray homemade yogurt as a popsicle to the barfer, and the healthy people eat a serving in the morning and again at night. The theory is that the live cultures nestled in the yogurt attack the viral culprits in the intestines. The result is a speedier recovery for the barfer, and no barfs at all for the healthy ones. I will swear by this suggestion until the day I die. Coming from a mom who has cleaned up more barf than I care to discuss, keep this tip in the back of your head next time you hear that horrible middle of the night call, "Mooooooooom....I barfed."
Yogurt tips and tricks: stir fresh fruit or jelly or honey or syrup into each serving, freeze in ice cube trays to make a quick popsicle, use frozen cubes in the blender with fruit to make a smoothie, try it as a recipe substitution, strain it overnight through cheesecloth to make Greek style yogurt, add powdered milk for extra vitamin D, add unflavored gelatin (2T) to the batch to make it a little thicker.
Dr. Mom tip: Our pediatrician recommends feeding Activia yogurt to the family when a housemate is barfing. We have since evolved to giving the frozen ice cube tray homemade yogurt as a popsicle to the barfer, and the healthy people eat a serving in the morning and again at night. The theory is that the live cultures nestled in the yogurt attack the viral culprits in the intestines. The result is a speedier recovery for the barfer, and no barfs at all for the healthy ones. I will swear by this suggestion until the day I die. Coming from a mom who has cleaned up more barf than I care to discuss, keep this tip in the back of your head next time you hear that horrible middle of the night call, "Mooooooooom....I barfed."
The best part about this project is telling your kids they are eating live organisms. I've never had it so quiet around my dinner table, with each child wondering suspiciously to themselves just what mommy was feeding them. Then one will look at the other and wonder how ridiculous they would sound if they told him he just felt the organisms move. It's great.
awesome.
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