Frugal hack: Homemade yogurt.

I’m having a bone graft today, to prepare for a dental implant some months down the road. Generally I look at dental work as God’s way of saying, “Oh, go ahead – have a milkshake for lunch.” But since this isn’t just a filling or a root canal, I have no idea how long it will be before I feel like chewing. One milkshake is fine; several days’ worth sounds cloying. That’s why I made a fresh batch of yogurt over the weekend.

Greek yogurt with some of the rhubarb compote I put up last fall is a fairly satisfying meal substitute. Protein, with no need to chew! Turning some of the yogurt into a healthy smoothie is another option that I think will help get me through the owie-mouth days to come. (Seriously: No idea whether it will be one or two days, or lots longer. This is my first bone graft and, I hope, my last.)

As I put the new batch into the fridge, I was reminded once again how simple it is to make the stuff. Draining it adds an extra layer of complexity, but it’s not that complex.

And the cost can’t be beat. I can get about two quarts of Greek yogurt, plus almost two quarts of whey (more on that later), for $2.61 to $3.14, depending on whether the milk is on sale. When the milk is so close to its sell-by date that it’s 50 percent off, then I pay as little as $1.57.

By contrast: A quick search of supermarkets shows one quart of Greek yogurt going for anywhere from $4.29 to $5.99.

If I hadn’t drained it I’d have gotten almost a gallon* of regular yogurt. But I prefer the thicker texture and milder flavor of the Greek-style product.

Ready to learn how to do this? Keep reading. I’ll also provide a life hack for making Greek yogurt the easy way. 

 

The basic strategy is, well, pretty basic:

Heat a gallon of milk (or half a gallon, if you prefer) to 185 degrees.

Cool it to between 105 and 110 degrees.

Put one cup (or half a cup) of plain, active-culture yogurt** into a glass or ceramic dish. (I use a large glass casserole these days – see the illustration, above – but in the past have used a slow-cooker liner and a Pyrex dish.)

Set the dish on your heating source. (A heating pad set on low works well. I use one of those warming trays.)

Very gently stir in two cups of the cooled-to-105-or-110 milk. When it’s mixed, gently stir in the rest of the milk.

Cover the dish, and wrap a towel around it.

Go away for 8 to 13 hours.

 

When it’s Greek to you

 

I’ve found 12 hours of cooking to be the sweet spot. Generally I start it in mid-evening and deal with the yogurt in the morning.

If you don’t plan to drain the yogurt, you’re all done. Set aside a cup (or half a cup) to save for the next week’s starter, then put everything in the fridge.

But if you do want a thicker, milder product, you’ve still got a job ahead. Sort of: Gravity does most of the work.

I put the yogurt in the fridge to cool for a few hours, because that’s just what I do. Then I scoop out a cup to save as starter, and put the rest into a cloth-lined colander set in a pan. Almost immediately I hear the whey start dripping through the cloth.

 

Pro tip: A cloth napkin or flour-sack dishtowel is better than cheesecloth. Much easier to wash afterward. As you can see from the illustration, it’s a really old napkin. When you decommission a cloth napkin, it still has another shot at usefulness. (Fun fact: The colander is one I got for free through a Buy Nothing Facebook page.)

Place a large pot lid atop the colander and put it back in the fridge. How long it will take to drain depends on how thick you want the Greek yogurt to be. Plan for at least four or five hours. At times I’ve left it draining too long and wound up with yogurt that was more like spackle: I could hold a spoonful upside-down and it wouldn’t fall.

I’ve heard that off-the-gridders use this as a form of cream cheese for homemade bagels. Since I want to eat the stuff out of a bowl, I’ll slowly stir in a little bit of whey at a time until it reaches the desired consistency. DF once saw me doing this and suggested that I put it in the Whey-Back Machine. 

(Regular readers know that this is typical behavior for him.)

What to do with the whey?

Ignore its appearance, which is a sickly yellow. The stuff has protein and shouldn’t be wasted if you can find a way to use it. If we had pigs or other animals, we’d feed it to them. We don’t, so here’s how we’ve used the yogurt whey:

Cooking my morning oatmeal (about one part whey to four parts water)

Substituting it for half of the water in that wonderful (and wonderfully simple) rustic bread recipe

Stirred into soups and stews

Used instead of water in waffle batter

Diluted with water and fed to our tomato plants***

Added to those healthy smoothies

A site called The Spruce Eats offers some other tips. Whey freezes well, so you don’t have to use it all at once.

 

A Greek yogurt cheat

 

Like a thicker yogurt but don’t want to ferment your own? Buy a quart of your favorite regular yogurt and drain it through that cloth-lined colander. You’ll get Greek yogurt (and whey!) for up to half the price of the prefab product.

But if you’re in a position to make yogurt even some of the time, I suggest you give it a try – even if you don’t have major dental work on the horizon. Not only are the savings noticeable, it’s somehow magic to turn a cup (or half a cup) of yogurt into a big bowl of the stuff. It’s also a good way to get extra calcium into your diet. Just don’t set the oven on fire, the way I once did.

*I use 14 cups of milk, plus the starter, because that’s what fits into the glass dish I use. Your mileage may vary.

**Every so often I buy a new starter, which in my case means a quart of Mountain High plain yogurt. This cost should somehow be factored in, I suppose. Usually it costs about $3.99 and I can get four batches’ worth of starter; what generally happens is I start a new batch, save a cup of the commercial yogurt for the next one, and just use the rest in smoothies. After that, a cup of each batch gets saved until it starts to smell a bit bread-y, at which point I turn it into cake. 

***We were having some issues with blossom end rot, and adding calcium to the soil was one recommendation. The BER hasn’t gone away entirely, but it’s a lot less prevalent.

Related reading:

• How to avoid takeout
• Crossing that (dental) bridge
• The one good thing about being sick