S6 E25: Homemade Yogourt

This week on Three Kitchens, Heather tries a money-saving method of making homemade yogourt. We also get into a few other tips and tricks for making your grocery dollars stretch a little farther. Be sure to check links to other episodes and recipes below to learn more about those. 

To make yogourt, all you need is milk and yogourt with live cultures. Oh, and some time, patience and an instant-read thermometer. Heather started off using the crock pot but the results weren't quite right - it didn't set like it was supposed to. So, she performed a rescue mission on the stovetop and got some nice yogourt out of it. The texture was a little grainy and all together, she needs practice with her method, but there's hope folks! Once you've played with it and determined what method works best for you and the appliances and tools you've got on hand, this can definitely be a money-saving kitchen hack.

 Some other tips we discuss include making your own marinara sauce (Erin makes a big batch and pops it in the freezer), garlic powder from dried garlic peels, and broth from veggie scraps and bones. 

Get the yogourt recipe.

Other things discussed in this episode:

S5 E33: Stretch your grocery dollars with arroz con pollo (Costa Rican Chicken with Rice)

S4 E34: Stretch your grocery dollars: creative uses for stems, peels, wilted herbs & more

S5 E19: Dreamy eggplant parmesan with guest, Paige Friend from The Beach Speaks Podcast

Recipe: Candied Carrot Cake Topper

 

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Transcript

Heather (00:14)
I will, I will try it again, even though I wasn't really thrilled with the results, I'll tell you that right now. I would just do stove top

Erin W (00:20)
I'm gonna drink my tea.

Heather (00:23)
You drink your tea while I welcome everyone to Three Kitchens podcast, your favorite home cooking podcast with your favorite home cooks. This is Erin Walker.

Erin W (00:34)
⁓ hi! Hello, I'm Erin. And... ⁓

Heather (00:35)
And my name is Heather Dyer and

I thought today we would talk a bit about money saving in the kitchen because I think it's something we can all use a few tips for.

because my idea for this episode is to make homemade yogurt. And by making it at home, I think I can save myself quite a bit of money at the store because you make it from milk, and milk is much cheaper than yogurt.

Erin W (01:07)
Yes.

Milk is definitely cheaper than yogurt. Yeah.

Heather (01:11)
Okay,

okay. And my husband and kids eat a lot of yogurt.

Erin W (01:16)
It is like the go-to snack item in our house too. And I don't know if it's just because everything else in my house, as we've discussed, is only an ingredient. We live in ingredient households and yeah, you can't just grab it and go, but yogurt is one of those things that the kids will grab and munch on all the time. Yeah. And it is getting pricier.

Heather (01:29)
It's not a self-contained snack.

Mm-hmm and my husband is

yeah, my husband is a big protein fiend and always looking for protein sources and so I buy this what I feel is expensive high protein yogurt. So anyway, I'm going to try

Erin W (01:44)
Right?

He's been on the high protein

trend before it was on trend.

Heather (01:58)
Yeah, his entire life, I'm sure. It's nothing new. It's just every so often I'm reminded that, yeah, yeah, protein. Okay. So there are different ways you can make it. I haven't figured out exactly which one I want to use. There is the instant pot method. I do have an instant pot, but mine does not have a yogurt function button on it.

Erin W (02:00)
his entire life.

It's not new in your house.

Heather (02:23)
which I think is why people use the Instant Pot, because it's so simple. get, yeah, set it, push the button, it does its thing, it gets to temperature, it's timed, whatever. ⁓ Now I can use mine as a crock pot, which is another method that you can make in a crock pot, or you can make it as a stove top in a big pot.

Erin W (02:27)
Set it and forget it, baby.

Okay.

Heather (02:48)
which I'm not going to do because I feel like that requires a little too much babysitting.

Erin W (02:52)
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you're gonna have a thermometer involved no matter which way you go on this. But I was just looking through socials before we popped onto this. And like the last video I watched was somebody making yogurt on their stove top. And I was like, hmm, this reminds me of making cheese. This reminds me of, you know, all the things we've made like quark.

Heather (03:10)
Mm.

I know.

Erin W (03:17)
and ricotta and then the cheese we indeed made long time ago.

Heather (03:25)
Yeah, we did. I think this

is simpler than cheese.

Erin W (03:28)
I think it's going to be much simpler than cheese, but it's still a process where you're heating.

And then fermenting, is fermenting involved in this? Okay.

Heather (03:38)
Yeah, and you need

to have a starter, just like with ⁓ other types of fermented things, but your starter can be yogurt. So you can keep the last bit of your yogurt and make it to start a new batch, right? So this is, I'm thinking I can keep this going if I figure out my method, yeah.

Erin W (03:47)
that makes sense.

Right, cuz.

Right, because that's,

yeah, and that's your bacterial population that you're gonna inoculate your yogurt with.

Heather (04:06)
Okay, science nerd. That's those are the words. my gosh, I can't wait to put that online later. Okay. ⁓ yeah. So this is my hope is that I can figure out the best method to make it easy and help everybody who's listening to make it too. And I know not everybody has an instant pot and maybe you're like me of an instant pot and then you look at it you don't have the yogurt button. You're like, well,

Erin W (04:16)
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Heather (04:35)
So I may go crockpot method. I feel like crockpots are fairly common and if you don't have one, you could probably pick one up at a thrift shop if you really are hardcore and want to try it, you know? Yeah.

Erin W (04:38)
I think.

You for sure can. Last time

we were at the thrift store there were a few crock pots on the shelf. So yeah, that's a good idea. And I think I'm going to hazard a guess that it's probably more energy efficient to do it in either your instant pot or a crock pot rather than stove top. Just because it might be a more efficient.

Heather (05:02)
Hmm.

Erin W (05:06)
machine that you're using rather than your stove.

Heather (05:09)
Yeah and if like me you have a gas range that you have historically had trouble with the temperature it's always a little difficult to get it just right where you want it between a simmer and a boil or whatever. yeah anyway that's my plan. Stay tuned for the second half when we come back and I tell you what what I actually did if I managed to make some yogurt. We're we're gonna find out. ⁓

Erin W (05:21)
Mm.

Heather (05:38)
But I thought just in this first half, we could also talk just briefly about some of the past episodes we've done and some ideas we have about saving money in the kitchen and on our grocery bills.

Erin W (05:50)
essential these days. I actually have something on my stove right now that is one of my money-saving slash protests about the cost of things in stores. I'm making my own pasta sauce from the recipe we got when we had Paige, friend from The Beach Speaks on our podcast, and she shared a really delicious

Heather (05:51)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Hmm.

Erin W (06:15)
⁓ eggplant parmesan recipe and the tomato sauce in that was so good came into my life at the perfect time because the price of pasta sauce and the size of the jars and the lid that the jars have all changed in my least favorable way and I was like I'm never buying pasta sauce again

Heather (06:32)
Ugh.

Yeah.

So are you going to can it or freeze it or what are you going to do when it's done?

Erin W (06:43)
I don't formally can it, I pop it into mason jars of the old tomato sauce jar size with the screw top lid that... The new lid is just like a... Yeah, it's just like a crappy... Like a pickle jar lid, you know? Like it doesn't fit your mason jar lids, which was delightful about... I was like, ⁓ I don't feel bad about spending money on this pasta sauce because I get a jar out of it and...

Heather (06:51)
What's the new lid? The ones in my pantry are still screwed up.

⁓

Okay.

Yeah.

Erin W (07:11)
I'm

a sucker for a good jar, but like, yeah, no screw top. So.

Heather (07:16)
That sauce recipe is fantastic.

Erin W (07:18)
Yeah, and it just, I put it back in those jars, I let it cool, and then it'll go in my freezer. I'm not comfortable enough with canning.

tomato sauce.

Heather (07:27)
I think you might need a pressure canner.

Erin W (07:29)
You might need a pressure canner or you have to really adjust your acid in it because it is not high acid. Even though it's tomato sauce. I don't know how that works, but

Heather (07:39)
Yeah, nevermind, not necessary to know.

Erin W (07:41)
Not necessary. I have room in my freezer, so I'm making and I'm buying jars of the cheapest tomatoes from the store. The whole tomatoes. They were on sale. I think they were 97 cents a can. It was incredible. And so I bought a good handful of cans and for those will make up my pasta sauce for the next while. So.

Heather (07:59)
Mmm.

Nice.

Erin W (08:07)
money saving and sticking it to the past to jar people.

Heather (08:11)
Good plan, I like that idea. One of our very popular, I don't know if it was so popular as an episode, but it was definitely a popular video that we've got over on YouTube is Aaron's ⁓ instructions for chopping a whole chicken. So it's cheaper to buy a whole chicken than say a package of breasts, a package of thighs.

And also the phrase that Erin might have coined, I don't know for certain, was free meat. Because the meat that's in the back, along the back of the chicken ⁓ often gets discarded if you're just buying those pieces. And if you buy the whole chicken, you can then make

Erin W (08:42)
I think we coined it.

Preenate!

Mm-hmm.

Heather (08:59)
Well, you can make broth, can make all sorts of things and all these recipes are on our website. But the thing that you made for that episode that I'm thinking of is a rose compollo, which was a rice with chicken using the free meat ⁓ from the chicken back. Which is a great tip.

Erin W (09:11)
Free meat! Yes, and I

save three backs and that's enough to make broth and then I get a meal out of the free meat.

Heather (09:27)
Yeah, it's so great. ⁓ Great tips. Okay.

Erin W (09:32)
And if you're making

broth, my other favourite thing is keeping all of my peels and vegetable cuts in the broth bin. I have a little tub that everything lives in. I think you have a bag. But all those kitchen scraps of vegetables from carrots, celery, herbs, peppers, onions.

Heather (09:47)
Mm-hmm.

Erin W (09:55)
skins, all that stuff goes into that broth bag and it makes it so quick and easy to make up broth because you don't have to chop anything up and you're like, ⁓ I just dump in my chicken breasts. I dump in my frozen vegetable bag and let it boil and you're off and running.

Heather (10:13)
Yeah, and if you don't have chicken, I have made vegetable broth using my scraps as well. So you can just make a veggie broth if you want. Or I imagine you could make like ⁓ a seafood broth if that's your thing. So always a good idea.

Erin W (10:17)
⁓ indeed.

Heather (10:31)
it may have just been a real or something that we posted on social, but you showed us how to make garlic powder using the garlic peels that you kept.

Erin W (10:43)
That's

right!

Heather (10:44)
Yeah, that one was also very popular. I think people were like, hey, I never thought of doing that with those old garlic peels.

Erin W (10:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, there are so many things that you don't have to toss out, right? That you can keep them and use them and extract more of your money out of.

Heather (10:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, in fact we did a whole episode using kitchen scraps for various things.

Erin W (11:08)
Yes, we did. So if you wanna...

Heather (11:09)
even like

Sorry, I was gonna say, I even made like candied carrot peels as a cute little cake topper for your carrot cake. Hey, Easter's coming, you could do that.

Erin W (11:16)
that's right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if you want to listen to more of our suggestions and repeats of some of the ones we've already talked about, go and check out that episode. It is linked below in the show notes.

Heather (11:31)
Okay, so there you go, a few money-saving ideas. Meanwhile, I'm going to wrap my head around the yogurt. I'm gonna sort out my method and when we come back after a quick little break, I will tell you. Hopefully I made some beautiful yogurt at the end of it.

Heather (12:15)
All right. We're going to talk about how to make yogurt at home and save yourself oodles and oodles of money at the store.

Erin W (12:24)
Ha ha ha!

Heather (12:25)
I don't know, Erin. I don't know. Okay. So I started out doing the crock pot method because it felt easy. Turns out I think I'm going to say right off the top. think if you're going to attempt this, unless you have an instant pot with a yogurt setting, I don't know how that works exactly. If you just like plop it in there, set it and off you go and it's done. That sounds great.

I don't know how that works because I don't have that function on my instrument pot. But using the crock pot didn't work out so well for me. ⁓

Erin W (12:54)
Ha ha!

Mm.

Dang.

Heather (13:01)
Yeah, and in the end, I think if I'm going to try this again, and I will, I will try it again, even though I wasn't really thrilled with the results, I'll tell you that right now. I would just do stove top

if I'm going to try this again. I feel like even though you're kind of standing over the stove and you're stirring and you're watching and checking temperature, I just think in the end, it's probably easier and more accurate.

Erin W (13:14)
Okay. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, think it's one of those things where until you really understand what you're doing in like the analog way, where you're understanding each step, like it's the whole knowing why you're doing it. And then once you learn that, maybe you can start fiddling with it using these other devices and whatnot.

Heather (13:50)
Yeah, and honestly, it's not like a lot of steps. Okay, so in the instructions for the slow cooker, I'll just quickly tell you kind of what you do for that. So you put eight cups of whole milk into your crock pot, put it on low for about two and a half hours.

and you're aiming for about 110 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit when it's warm.

Erin W (14:20)
Okay.

Heather (14:21)
check it with your thermometer, make sure you're in the range.

⁓ Keep the lid on it and just unplug it and let it sit for three hours, it says. Because at this point the temperature needs to come down. These instructions are a little vague, okay? ⁓ After the three hours, you're gonna stir in your half a cup of yogurt.

Erin W (14:36)
Okay.

Heather (14:48)
because you need that live culture from the yogurt that you already have.

You take a little bit of the warm milk out and mix half a cup of yogurt that you already have into kind of just whisk it together and then put that back into the slow cooker, whisk it up so it's nice and mixed in. Close it up.

Erin W (14:57)
Great.

Heather (15:08)
cover the whole thing with like a blanket or a couple of towels and you're going to let it ferment, right? That's what you're doing with this

it up. Yes, now cover the whole thing with like a big blanket and you're gonna wanna keep it warm. I don't know exactly how warm for eight to 12 hours or overnight. So I bundled it up in a blanket. I put it into my oven.

Erin W (15:22)
Go forth and multiply.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (15:38)
First I heated the oven up to my lowest temperature on mine, which is about 170, then I turned it off. Then I put my nice bundle of crock pot into the oven and I left the oven light on and I left it overnight. Okay, so in the morning you're supposed to have yogurt. I had...

Erin W (15:42)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Heather (15:56)
very liquidy runny what was sort of the texture of white glue. You know the white craft glue we used like as kids it's kind of like gooey.

Erin W (16:05)
Huh.

Yeah.

Heather (16:10)
It was not quite right. As soon as I put my spoon and stirred, was like, what have we got here? ⁓

Erin W (16:17)
Something didn't go...

What have we here?

Heather (16:20)
Something went awry. However,

I smelled it, because right away I was like, no, did I spoil eight whole cups of milk? But no, it doesn't smell bad. There was nothing like, I haven't ruined it. So immediately I go to Googling, how do I rescue my failed attempt at making yogurt? And so I put it in my big Dutch oven on the stove top.

Erin W (16:28)
dear God. Okay.

Okay.

Heather (16:45)
And I slowly heated it up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This is what it told me to do. 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And then we're gonna wrap it all up again. So remember it already has your yogurt in there. So it's already got the culture in it. At this point we're trying to rescue. ⁓

Erin W (17:05)
Okay.

Heather (17:07)
So I did all that. I did the thing with the blanket again. I heated my oven. I got it nice and warm and I put it overnight. Yeah. And this time in the morning, I had what I think was more like yogurt. It was what I gave to you. So it was, is thin, very thin. And the texture is a little bit grainy, I would say. Like it was a kind of a not smooth texture.

Erin W (17:22)
Yeah, it was more like yogurt.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (17:35)
And if you want to thicken it, which of course you would, because it's very thin, you strain it through cheesecloth and the longer you strain it, the thicker it's going to be. So I put a small amount of it, like a cup or so in cheesecloth and strained it, went out for a dog walk. I was gone like a little over an hour and then came back and it was like mascarpone cheese in my cloth. Nothing, nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't what I was going for. So I added some of the whey, the liquid.

Erin W (17:56)
Mm.

Heather (18:02)
back in, mixed it up. So it's kind of forgiving in that sense that you can thicken it as much as you want it thickened.

Erin W (18:10)
Yes. That's nice that it can...

Heather (18:11)
I'm

Erin W (18:12)
you're not tossing eight cups of milk because fuck, because that's just not that is not a money saving tip right there.

Heather (18:20)
No, and also

if you don't like the result, which I mean, I've eaten it, it's not terrible. It tastes like yogurt. It tastes just like a unsweetened yogurt, but you can also use it in baking or smoothies as you would yogurt. So it's not gone to waste. However, I have not perfected the method.

Erin W (18:27)
Mm-hmm.

But of course.

No, that's true. I found that the portion...

And the portion that you gave me, I didn't have to or I chose not to strain it because as it settled in that container, it separated from that weight and it was actually like a great thickness when I scooped it out. Because I opened it up and I was... I looked at it and I like...

Heather (18:57)
Okay.

Erin W (19:00)
I gave it one of these to kind of, you know, see what's going on. And I was like, the yogurt can't be that thin. And so I dug my spoon in and sure enough, like I got a nice scoop of yogurt from just below all that liquid.

Heather (19:13)
So would

you, you would just sort of pour off the liquid and.

Erin W (19:16)
So you

can pour off the liquid, you could mix it all up together if you wanted. I've just been scooping the bits out and eating it with my granola that I am in love with right now. And it's fantastic. I mean, I get the texture, isn't the smooth texture that we would expect from yogurt. I agree that it's kind of that, like you say, grainy cheese, like almost.

I don't want to say curdled because that could really get people upset, but it's not curdled, but it's got those little bits in there almost like when you have a curdled mill.

Heather (19:44)
No, it's not curdled.

Kind of. To me it was like mascarpone. You know how that little, almost a rougher texture, like a, it's so hard to describe. I don't know what the words are, but.

Erin W (19:53)
Kind of, but yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of a funny one. But yeah, no, and I wonder if that's just because you had to go through this double step of fumbling around with it.

Heather (20:09)
It could be.

So maybe if you start to stop on the stove.

Erin W (20:14)
That's what I'm wondering.

Heather (20:15)
really get the

like really get the temperature right. The problem is I don't know exactly what that overnight temperature is supposed to be. So when I had it in the oven and I even put like a couple of different times I put a warm magic bag it's like a wheat bag you know I put it in next to the pot just to yes we have them for the cat. I put it in there just to add a little extra warmth.

Erin W (20:27)
Mm-hmm.

that's great. Yeah. One for the cat, one for you.

Heather (20:43)
to the oven and I had my thermometer that has a longer cable. I just set it inside on top of the pot and I had the reading on the outside and I just kind of kept an eye on it. I didn't let it get below 108 degrees and I didn't know why I just was like when it hit 108 I'm like, okay, I don't feel like I want it to get any cooler. So that's when I added the magic bag and kept it between like 108 to 110 within the oven.

Erin W (20:44)
Yeah.

huh, yeah.

Heather (21:09)
Now I don't know what temperature the milk was with the yogurt, but

That's a little hard to do. Like when you've got it all wrapped up and put to bed, it's a little hard to keep tabs on the internal temperature.

Erin W (21:20)
Yeah, and that's the part that is that just to optimize the growth rate of your bacteria so that

It doesn't take a long time. I'm, that's my guess.

Right? Because those reactions would be probably temperature dependent.

Heather (21:39)
I would assume it needs the heat to grow.

Erin W (21:41)
Yeah. ⁓

Heather (21:43)
I mean,

I don't really know.

yeah, so this was one of those funny ones. Like at the end of the day, I did get yogurt and I have been eating it and I like it. I've eaten it with granola and a little drizzle of maple syrup yesterday. It was really yummy. ⁓ but.

Erin W (21:54)
Mm-hmm.

I thought the flavor was really good. Like it hit,

I enjoyed the flavor.

Heather (22:07)
Yeah, I mean it tastes like a good Greek yogurt to me. Like it doesn't have any, you could sweeten it or flavor it with fruit or whatever you'd normally like.

Erin W (22:12)
Yeah.

You know what would be really good with this is remember that roasted berry jam that we made with the panna cotta. Sometimes I make a batch of that up and keep it in the fridge. I would put, that would be, that's super sweet and delicious, but I think it would go really good with these, with the yogurt.

Heather (22:25)
you

Yeah, would. So anyway, I guess at the end I would say try it, but just do the stove top and see how that works for you. And maybe do half a batch to start. Like do a, with four cups of milk instead of eight. You know, like just dial it down. I think every...

Erin W (22:49)
a good idea.

Heather (22:54)
Go ahead.

Erin W (22:54)
I was gonna ask, how long can you keep it for?

Heather (22:56)
I think it's good in the fridge in a jar or a container for like three weeks or so.

Erin W (23:03)
wow.

Heather (23:04)
You

know, and also I believe I look, didn't do a bunch of research into it, but I know you can keep that way if you do strain or separate them. The whey itself is like high protein and you can also use that as a liquid in baking or smoothies or whatever. So don't be too quick to toss it. My husband was like, well, that's all the protein. You know, Mr. Protein, you're tossing out all the whey.

Erin W (23:12)
Okay.

Right?

Heather (23:29)
Isn't that like when we buy whey protein for things, I'm like, I guess maybe you should put it in your smoothie today.

Erin W (23:35)
Oh, I hadn't ever thought of that. Oh, you just put two words together in my mind that never related to one another until now. Okay.

Heather (23:39)
Right? Yeah.

normally

when you even the store-bought yogurt has a bit of that liquid it settles at the top and you stirred in and you carry on right i think they've just mastered like the ratio of how much yeah because this was a lot more liquid than you would get in a store-bought product but

Erin W (23:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Probably.

Heather (24:04)
So, needs a bit more work, but was not a complete fail.

Erin W (24:08)
No, and I like the fun of playing with a fermented product at home. Why not?

Heather (24:14)
Yes,

it can be intimidating. So if you were thinking like, ⁓ no, that's not good. Remember the source. I often fail at things in the kitchen. It's not gonna be indicative of your experience with this. Listen, you can do it. You can make yogurt.

Erin W (24:23)
Mm-hmm.

No, but I

wouldn't call this a fail. This is just a first step, lesson learned. How come we never let ourselves fail? And we always are so poo-poo about it. Like that's like the best way to learn how to get better.

Heather (24:51)
Well, that's true. Thank you for saying

that. Because I guess because we're trying to, when we say we're inspiring people to try things, it just helps if the thing was a raging success and we can be like, this was so awesome, go and make it. It's foolproof, go do it. When it's like, ⁓ I need a little bit of trial and error, it doesn't feel quite as inspiring somehow, right?

Erin W (25:14)
Unless you're

stubborn. ⁓ What a challenge? I'm on it.

Heather (25:20)
Okay, good.

Anyone who's up for a little bit of a challenge, you could try this one and report back how to work for you or if you've already mastered it and you have the key to perfect homemade yogurt, come and find us on social media and give us your tips.

Erin W (25:24)
Yeah.

Indeed.

Heather (25:37)
All right, there you go.

Erin W (25:39)
you for going down this path. It's been really interesting to learn from. I keep seeing these things going on and because we had talked so much about what method to use, I feel more willing to go about this now that I know that the Stovetop is probably the best method for starting out with. So thank you. You have inspired me.

Heather (25:59)
Yeah, well, and it helps

you because you don't have those kitchen appliances that would otherwise be required. So analog is the best this time. Yay.

Erin W (26:08)
Ain't no more room. Yay!

Erin W (26:38)
You're gonna make a whole new

Heather (26:41)
My friend, do I name my blob of yogurt the way you named your sourdough starter?

Erin W (26:44)
Ooh,

get on it.