Yoghurt: Saving Money and Carbs - Macro Four
Nice. I may have to give this a try. I’ve been getting greek yogurt from Costco, so it’s not super-expensive, and pretty reasonable on the carbs, but I do like the idea of getting the carb count even lower.
Our Instant Pot has a yogurt setting…may have to look into whether that would work for making this easier…
When i make yogurt I get 4 gallons of milk and then i buy one $1 container of plan yogurt and put it right in the milk and put top on it. I have a Excalibur dehydrator that i put all 4 gallon jugs in for 24 hours. Then I will strain it all in cheese cloth. Depending how thick you want it i get about 1 to 2 gallons of yogurt.
I use my crockpot to make yogurt. I plug it into a dimmer switch to get the temperature lower, and ferment it for 24 hours so ,ore of the lactose is eaten up. The Instant Pot looks very tempting for yogurt, though!
Given how good the IP is for many, many keto meals (pork ribs are AMAZING in the IP), if you make yogurt, I’d say put the IP on your list for sure.
Yogurt has been my biggest Keto problem food. I simply can’t be trusted to eat a reasonable amount, lol. I also was totally surprised by how many carbs are in plain full fat Greek. I guess knowledge really is power.
A friend of mine uses an ice chest. After adding the starter to the warmed milk, wrap all of it in a thick towel and put in a closed ice chest for the day. Works for her.
I used to make a lot of yogurt, 1 gallon at a time, but have switched to making kefir. I slightly prefer yogurt’s taste and texture but believe kefir is healthier. Making kefir is easier. With yogurt I found I had to buy new yogurt for starter every month as I couldn’t keep the culture pure enough saving/reusing it batch to batch and the quality of yogurt would decline without periodic change to fresh starter. But the kefir grains stay pretty consistent without much fuss. There’s no need to preheat & cool the milk, just add cold milk to the grains and let sit at ~72F for a day then move to the fridge to store. Scoop out or strain the grains when ready to start the next batch. We typically buy 1 gallon of milk per week and do 3 quart size batches of kefir per week for my wife and myself with the rest of the milk used in coffee, tea and cooking. Very easy to keep going with a semi regular schedule.
I make coconut yogurt in my instant pot. Coconut yogurt is so easy because you do not have to heat up coconut milk before incubating. I just pour room temperature coconut cream into a jar with some culture and “bloomed” gelatin (coconut yogurt will not thicken in its own), pop it in the (dry!) instant pot, press the yogurt button, and set the timer. 12 hours later I have delicious coconut yogurt (it needs to thicken up in the fridge because of the gelatin).
Would you mind giving a bit more detailed directions that I can try following this at home? My daughter is allergic to dairy and I have been desperately trying to make the coconut yogurt in my IP, but not having so much luck. Thanks!
It can’t get much easier than this!
So Easy IP Coconut Yogurt
1 carton So Delicious culinary coconut cream (11 oz). (Or 1 can of full fat coconut milk).
1/2 tsp sugar (optional, for the microbes, not you)
1/2 tsp powdered plain gelatin sprinkled over 1/4 cup water*
Culture of your choice (I
use 1/2 packet (2 1/2g) of
Yogourmet, or some
dairy yogurt with live
cultures, or contents of 1-2 probiotic
capsules).
DIRECTIONS
Sprinkle the gelatin powder over 1/4 cup of water and let it “bloom” for a few minutes. I microwave for ten seconds and then stir to melt and mix the bloomed gelatin into the water.
Put the coconut cream in a glass 1/2 pint jar. Stir in the sugar, mixed gelatin, and culture. Place inside a DRY IP Duo and put a lid on the Instant Pot (glass or the original lid). Press yogurt button and use the adjust button to the middle light indicator to incubate (not boil!). It takes 12 hours, give or take depending on the amount of tartness you prefer. Adjust the time with the “+” and “-” buttons. Coconut yogurt tends to be mildly sweeter than dairy yogurt so you shouldn’t expect a very tart product.
Coconut yogurt will not thicken on its own. That’s why the gelatin is added. It will still be thin and runny after incubating. Refrigerate several hours to thicken.
*If you are vegan, choose a vegan thickener like agar agar, flax meal, etc.instead of gelatin.
I use my instant pot to make yogurt and it is easy and gives a great result! You get to choose the quality of the ingredients and strain to your own personal desire.
There’s an Instant Pot group on FB that has a HUGE number of followers. Every day there are people who freak out because it looks like such a daunting task to make yogurt, but it’s really not that difficult.
One thing that drives me nuts is that the standard setting for yogurt with the Instant Pot is 8 hours and sometimes people forget to put their yogurt in the fridge for several hours after that. They panic and throw the good yogurt away because of “food safety” concerns. AAARRRGGHHH!!! Fundamental lack of understanding that bacteria MAKES milk into yogurt, and a longer fermentation time–even at a lower temperature, may make it more sour tasting but not unsafe.
People don’t think about the fact that humans have been preserving milk as yogurt for thousands of years, long before we had refrigerators to cool the milk! Some people really know how to make a relatively simple task very hard.
It is soooo easy in the instant pot. I use to use the stove top and a heating pad which is fiddly ~ but still pretty darn easy. Recently I discovered making cottage cheese in the instant pot is even easier. I may try marcarpone cheese this weekend. Should be very easy.
For folks who use the Instant Pot and use regular commercial yogurt as a starter culture, what settings do you use once you’ve pasteurized the milk?
I took a look at the IP instructions, and it looks simple enough, but the second part of the cooking says to refer to the starter culture for time and temperature. Not sure what settings to use, since I was planning on using some Greek yoghurt as my starter.
I have made it before with success but with the instant pot, there will be little to do but allow it to come to almost a boil using the yogurt setting. This is the method I use…
Once the milk is heated to the proper temp., there is a cooling off period (112-115) and then I mix a bit of the milk into the store bought yogurt and then using a whisk, stir it into the milk. Then set the pot to the time you want (8 hours is great). Place the lid on and wait. Once it is done fermenting, I like to strain through coffee filters in a strainer for Greek style. I do this in the fridge overnight.