I’ve tried a few different ways to make yogurt, with varied success.  But then I found out that you can make it in a crockpot and decided to give it a try.  It comes out perfectly every time!   I have made it a half gallon at a time with my smaller crockpot, but this week I made a gallon of it in my larger crockpot and it came out better than ever!

Ingredients:

1 gal. milk
1 c. plain yogurt with live cultures (I used Stonyfields)

Directions:

Pour the milk into a large crockpot and heat on low until the milk reaches 185 degrees.  It took a couple of hours for mine to get that high but it’s best not to rush this process too much.  I have heated it on the stove before to save time.  It works, but the yogurt had a much milder flavor and was thicker when I did it this way.

Once the milk reaches 185 degrees, turn the crockpot off and let the milk cool to 115 degrees.  remove a couple of cups of milk from the crockpot and stir the yogurt into it.  Pour the thinned yogurt into the crockpot and mix gently.

Keep the milk around 115 degrees for about 8 hours.  I did this by wrapping a plat warmer around the crockpot, then a bath towel and then folding a large towel and covering the top with that.  I plugged the plate warmer in and let it go.  Every hour or so I checked the temperature, but it stayed steady so I never had to do anything else.  After about 8 hours I poured the yogurt into a strainer covered in cheesecloth and let it sit for an hour.  After the excess liquid had had a chance to drain I scooped it into containers and put it in the frig.  By the next morning we had delicious tasting yogurt that was only slightly thinner in consistency than tore bought yogurt.