Yoghurt – Healthy and much better than shop bought

What can be nicer than refreshing zingy, creamy yoghurt?

Maybe yoghurt made with exactly the ingredients that you prefer … e.g. honey or a fruit compote or coulis.

Or perhaps you want to use your yoghurt in  a savoury dish, making a nicely spiced home-made chicken tikka or a cooling cucumber and mint raita?

All these are possible with commercially sourced plain yoghurt, but how fresh is it? and how much would you pay for a full litre?

Many years ago, I remembered my mother making her own yoghurt using a little machine that provided a gentle warmth which encouraged a ‘seed’ culture to develop over the course of several hours, turning the watery milk into rich creamy yoghurt overnight.

With our own kids eating us out of house and home and spending a fortune on shop bought Greek yoghurt with honey, it was decided that the time was ripe to give it a try and so we ordered the yoghurt maker shown from Lakeland along with an extra spare bowl to rotate the yoghurt and ensure that when running out we would always have an extra batch in preparation.

Delivery was very fast, being within 3 working days of order.

The instructions recommended the use of Full Fat milk, preferably of the long life UHT variety as there would be much lower quantities of bad bacteria than found in fresh pasteurised milk as the UHT milk went through much more of a sterilising process.

so … one lite of UHT Full Fat milk and two teaspoons (yes .. just two teaspoons) of fresh supermarket yoghurt and eight hours later consuming less electricity than a lightbulb, you have yoghurt …  albeit somewhat unpalatably warm at this stage.

After refrigeration, season to taste for whatever dish you require. In our case, it was to be a honeyed yoghurt.

Was it a success? You bet!! The second bowl was in preparation again that night and the machine has been on pretty much every day churning out fresh new yoghurt daily seeded with two teaspoons of natural yoghurt from our last batch.

And the cost … well we can pick up a litre of UHT milk for around 70p … compare that with 1 litre of shop bought yoghurt costing around £2 and more. Plus we know that our yoghurt really is fresh. For extra luxury, consider adding a dollop of cream for an extra thick yoghurt.

Cost of the yoghurt maker from Lakeland was £19.99 (+ delivery) and it has already paid for itself. Other yoghurt makers will perform in a similar way.

Tagged as: Cucumber, FRUIT, Honey, Milk, Pasteurization, UHT, Ultra-high-temperature processing, Yoghurt