Making Yogurt in the Crock Pot: A weekend experiment

{a bowl of homemade yogurt with granola and honey}

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been collecting recipes for making homemade items. This weekend was my foray into trying homemade yogurt, using the crock pot.

It appears as though there are lots of ways to make your own yogurt, but most of them involved heating and cooling and measuring temperatures—a bit too involved for my likes (plus, I don’t have a suitable thermometer). Using the crock pot, though, is a lot more straightforward and just requires you be able to set a timer, plug and unplug. That is more my style.

So we tried it and it’s just as easy as it sounds. The only thing is that this isn’t exactly like the store-bought variety: it’s runnier and very bland. I added some honey to it and that perked it up substantially for my tastebuds.

Also, be forewarned that this makes a hefty dose of yogurt! I hadn’t expected that since we only eat it occasionally, but now I have a Tupperware full in my fridge so I suspect I’ll be having yogurt and granola every day for the next week. (However, if you frequently make smoothies, I think this would work great for that.)

Here are the steps, which I followed from Nourishing Days.

Crock Pot Yogurt

You’ll need:

Crock pot
½ gallon of milk (I used skim but trying 2% or whole might offer a thicker consistency, not sure)
½ cup of yogurt with live active cultures (just read the ingredients list and it should say)

• Turn your crock pot to low and pour in 1/2 gallon of milk.
• Heat on low for 2 hours and 30 minutes.
• Once 2 hours and 30 minutes have elapsed turn your crock pot off and unplug it. Let the milk cool in the crock with the lid on for 3 hours.
• After 3 hours remove 1-2 cups of the warmed milk and place in a bowl. To that add 1/2 cup of yogurt with live active cultures and mix very well.
• Pour the yogurt-milk mixture back into the milk and whisk thoroughly.
• Place the cover back on the crock and wrap the entire crock pot in a thick bath towel or two.
• Let it culture overnight, 8-12 hours.
• In the morning stir yogurt (if desired) and store in glass quart jars or a container of your choice.
• For optimum texture, refrigerate for at least 8 hours before using.

If you’re curious, here’s what I understand about the science behind the yogurt-making: Essentially, you have to heat up the milk to kill off any bacteria in it so that it’s a blank slate. You let it cool so that it doesn’t kill the yogurt bacteria. Then you let the yogurt-and-milk mixture ferment and you're set!