Homemade Natural Yoghurt – easy and delicious – Little Big H

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G’day everyone, how are you all?  I’m sorry for the lack of recipes lately but I have been concentrating on my little family and haven’t had the motivation.  My beautiful little boy lost his daddy a few months ago and it came as a huge shock to all.  H is still so little and has taken it all very well.  

Today we bring you a new recipe that we love and make.  Homemade natural yoghurt.  

It is so easy to do, it’s smooth and creamy and you will never buy it again.  Nothing beats waking up of a morning and digging into a pot of homemade yoghurt.  It only requires two ingredients and a little time.  You can adjust the taste by allowing it sit for less time for a more subtle taste or leave it longer for a stronger taste – handy if making the switch from the sugary variety.

We always eat natural yoghurt but H loves the little suckable pouches from the supermarket.  I try to avoid them as much as possible because they are full of sugar.  I’m sure he doesn’t particularly love the taste, its more the novelty of the little pouches.  

So you can imagine my joy when I came across Chureb Baby’s reusable food pouches (FYI this is not a sponsored post – I just love them and wanted to share).

Once I have made a new batch of yoghurt, I add my homemade natural yoghurt to a dozen pouches and leave it in the fridge for H to help himself.  To change it up I will mash a handful of berries, add passionfruit, banana etc, and add it to the pouches, seal, and swish it around with my hands to combine. I always add the fruit if he requests it as the acid in the fruit will turn the yoghurt runny if it sits too long.

My cheeky monkey eating straight from the pot.  I use two 500ml mason jars to make my yoghurt.  Use your homemade yoghurt to make the next batch the following week.

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  • 1 litre unhomogenized milk
  • 3 tablespoons natural yoghurt
  • First sterilise the jars you will be storing the yoghurt in (see note on how I do this)
  • Add milk to a saucepan and bring up to 92 degrees C – use a thermometer and continue to stir while it reaches this temperature.  Remove from the heat. 
  • Place the saucepan over a cold water bath to bring the temperature back down to 40 degrees.  
  • Add the natural yoghurt and stir to combine.  Add the milk mixture to your sterilised jars.  I use two 500ml jars but a single 1 litre jar would be fine.  Fill right to the top and seal. 
  • Incubation: The milk mixture has to remain at 40 degrees C.  There are a number of ways to do this.  Put the jars into an esky of 40 degree water, adding more water as needed.  I use a sous vide machine and set it to 40 degrees.  If you don’t have either of these put the pot of water in the sink with the lid on and fill it with warm water and also surround it with 40 degree water.  This method will take a bit more work as the water surrounding will cool off quicker.  Check every couple of hours and add hot water to bring back up to 40 degrees.
  • Leave in the 40 degree water for 6 hours.  This will a produce a fairly mild tasting yoghurt.  Leave up to 12 hours for a stronger taste.  Refrigerate and use within a week. 

Sterilising jars:  Add the jars to a large pot and cover with water, bring to the boil.  Boil for 15 minutes, add the lids when there is 5 minutes remaining.  Turn off the heat and allow to cool in the water.  Turn out onto a clean tea towel to dry. Fruit flavour ideas:  mash 1/4 avocado, banana and maple, vanilla bean, passionfruit, mixed berries, etc. 

If you make my Natural Yoghurt, be sure to take a picture and upload to Instagram with the hashtag #littlebigh so I can check out your creation. xx