Yogurt cheese, making your own Greek yogurt...

A while back I realized I was spending a small fortune each week on Greek yogurt- bare minimum of $25 per week.  I decided to try making my own and bought a yogurt maker.  Turns out it is super easy, and a few posters here on Oh helped me trouble shoot my first couple attempts.  (Uh, not much of a cook here and I was not taking off the skin from the milk- duh!)  I love the homemade stuff because it doesn't have all the extra chemicals and crap and the flavor is fantastic.  Extra bonus, my husband started bring home the milk from school the kids were not opening and tossing out, so yogurt now is super cheap for my household.  

But I digress.  I picked up a strainer at Amazon that was billed as a yogurt cheese maker.  Really, it is just a nice strainer and you let the yogurt strain for 2 days to make it thick.  It turns out very thick and spreadable.  This is a fantastic replacement for cream cheese on a bagel- no fat, great taste, and loaded with protein.  Great stuff!

It is worth trying if you are a big yogurt eater.  You could just buy Fage yogurt, and then strain that stuff.  Should work. 

i spend a fortune on greek yogurt also ... about how much milk does it take to make 16oz of yogurt (.5 liter or 500g approx).  wondering how cost effective it is since milk is pretty pricey too.

In my neck of the woods (SEKansas) a gallon of high quality milk is about 3.19 a gallon, which will yield approximately 2 quarts of Greek yogurt (depending on how much whey you strain out). A quart of Dannon Oikos Greek is about 4.50. Figures out to a 65 percent savings- not bad, eh?

One batch is 42 ounces of milk

1 envelope of yogurt starter ($1)

It comes out the consistency of a normal Dannon yogurt.  Strain for 2-3 hours Greek.  I now strain mine all day so a spoon can stand up in it for the most part.  The more whey you drain, the less you get.

I save 6 ounces out and use that as the starter for the next batch.  I repeat this for 3-5 batches so that original $1 goes a long way.  You could just buy a plain yogurt in the store that has active culture in it and use that too.  

After taking out the starter and straining I am left with about 28 ounces of Greek yogurt that is pretty thick.  

Smiles all around! Sounds like you've got the yogurt thing down! I have just now started freezing 4 oz. starter yogurt containers so I never run out and have to go out and buy commercial stuff for starters. I wasn't confident about the acidophilus surviving the freeze, but it seems to be indestructible ! Enjoy your yogurt!

You know, I have never used only 4 ounces.  I usually go with 6.  TIme to cut back!  I appreciate your help in those early days- made all the difference!  We are a serious family of yogurt geeks now.  My one daughter gets ticked if we have to buy it in the store anymore!  

Now if I could just find some sugar free black cherry topping. I do miss the Black cherry greek yogurt flavor.  

Try fresh or frozen black cherries chopped fine, add a little splenda or stevia if you want to, then add that to the yogurt. We use chopped cherries or berries to ours, yum.

I don't have a yogurt maker ( had one years and years ago) but I recently found that's proof setting on my oven works great . The best yogurt ever. I strain it using butter muslin . It's amazing . Tmi but it really helps me stay regular . I have it with a tiny bit of honey or fruit  . Ive been using the direct cultures from cheesemaking.com( y5- sweet yogurt) 

Very cool.  One of these days I am going to experiment with my oven to see if I can heat it to say 200 degrees, turn it off, let it cool a bit and see if it can hold the right temperature with just the pilot light.  I am just a bit afraid of getting it wrong and then eating poison yogurt!