Crock Pot Yogurt

Hello all, in this instructable, I will show you how to make SUPER EASY crock pot yogurt. Yogurt is very good for us, and also somewhat expensive, with this info, you will be able to make a gallon of plain yogurt, which can be flavored portion by portion, by adding fruit, or some jam, or whatever else you would like to flavor it with, and the only cost is a gallon of milk, a small container of yogurt (1/2 cup as a starter), a crock pot, and a little bit of your time! We make our yogurt with 2% milk, if you use whole milk, your final yogurt will be thicker.

First, you will add the gallon of milk to your crock pot. Turn it on LOW, put the cover on, and leave for 2 and a half hours, I use the oven timer, so that it beeps to remind me when its done. During this time, Go do other stuff :)  after two and a half hours, Turn off the crock pot, leave the cover on, and let cool for 3 hours.

after 3 hours has past, remove about 1 cup of your heated milk, and stir 1/2 cup of plain yogurt into this milk in a separate bowl, stir until well mixed, and add the bowl of milk and yogurt back into the rest of the milk in your crock pot, replace cover, wrap the whole crock pot up in a small blanket, or large towel, and leave out at room temperature for about 12 hours.

After 12 hours or so, unwrap your crock pot, the milk will have thickened, and turned into a gallon of yummy yogurt! the next step is to line a colander or strainer with cheesecloth, (necessity being the mother of invention, we were out of cheesecloth, and lined our colander with coffee filters, worked very well) set over a large bowl, and let the whey strain off, the most effective way we have found to do this is to cover it and leave it in the fridge this way for a couple hours, This step is not absolutely necessary, but if the whey is strained off, your yogurt will be slightly thicker. next, scoop some out into a bowl, add some fresh fruit, or jam, or honey and vanilla, we had some  thimbleberry jam in the freezer from last years forest forage trip, so we used that. Finally, its time to sit down, and  enjoy a healthy pro-biotic snack! We store our yogurt in mason jars in the refrigerator, and it will last a little more than a month, but ours is never able to stick around that long, as the kiddos eat it up pretty quick!