Today I am happy to share a guest blog by Coach Kate. Fitted that her first entry is on Greek yogourt. Annie š
Hi My Name is Kate and Iām a Greek Yogurt Addict. So I love Greek style yogurt and Iāve owned an Instant Pot for several years. It would seem like a no brainer that I would make my own yogurt wouldnāt it? I mean thereās a button right there on the front of the pot that says yogurt. Seems pretty foolproofā¦
Today I tried it. All that you need is 4L of the milk of your choice, I went with skim, half a cup of plain yogurt and some time. The instructions were simple. Pour all the milk into the pot and push the yogurt button until it says āboilā. So far so good. Once it beeps remove the inner pot and submerge in cold water until the temperate of the milk reaches 115 degrees. Ok, so this took a little while but I had things to get on with while it boiled away and itās not like I had to sit a stir it or make sure it didnāt burn. Once the milk has cooled to 115 degrees you temper the yogurt (fancy way of saying pour a little of the warm milk into the cool yogurt so it doesnāt separate) and then add all the yogurt into the pot. Push the yogurt button again until you get it to read a time. Now you have a choice. For a milder (less tangy) yogurt you let it ferment for 8 hours and if you want a stronger taste up to 12 hours. Uncertain of exactly how tangy it was going to be I split the difference and set it for 10 hours. Also I didnāt want to be up past my bedtime and I wasnāt sure how long the process afterward was going to take.
Once the pot beeps itās time to strain out the liquid, this is what makes the yogurt Greek style. Iām not going to lie, things got a little messy at this point. I sometimes lack patience but in my defence I also lacked a really big second pot. I clipped a clean dish cloth to the top of my soup pot thinking that this would be big enough to do the job. Then upended the contents of the Instant Pot into this. The good news is it looks and smells like yogurt. The bad news is that the cloth touched the bottom of the pot which makes it kind of impossible for it to really drain properly. Never mind, Iāll just pick up the cloth carefully and squeeze out the liquid. This will also have the benefit of being faster. It started off quite well and then it stopped going well. One corner of the cloth slipped from my grasp spilling yogurt back into the liquid that I had just so carefully squeezed out. I rescued what I could and deposited it into a bowl and then began the process with what remained. There may have been giant splashes of white goop all over the kitchen but we live and learn. The second batch of squeezing went much better, weird right? Iām sure the smaller amount had nothing to do with it. Anywayā¦ the yogurt was a pretty good consistency by this point but not quite as thick as I ideally like it. So I cleaned out my pot, got a new cloth and set the whole thing up for a second straining. Now this time I was sure to keep the cloth well above the bottom of the pot. Also the amount of yogurt that I was trying to contain was much smaller. A result of both already removing a great deal of liquid and the redecoration of my kitchen with yogurt. I decided to practice a little more patience this time and leave the whole thing dripping in the fridge overnight allowing gravity to do the work for me. Now when I got up in the morning the check on it I had some really thick yogurt, I mean THICK. But donāt panic this is a super easy fix. I scraped the yogurt into a container and then added back in a little of the liquid, stirring vigorously, until I got my desired consistency.
The verdict? I think I would let it ferment for the full 12 hours. I like a bit more tang to my yogurt than I got out of this batch. I ended up with about 8 cups of yogurt for my 4 litres of milk. Would I do it again? Iām not sure Iāll be totally switching over to making my own as we go through and alarming amount of yogurt in this house and it is quite a time consuming process. I think Iāll wait and see how fast we go through this batch before deciding whether itās worth making it a regular thing. I canāt see myself doing this more than once a week but doing one batch a week and supplementing with some store bought might be the answer.
Hereās the actual recipe that I used https://www.homemadefoodjunkie.com/instant-pot-greek-yogurt/
Kate