If you eat a lot of yogurt and want to save money, seriously consider making your own.
When COVID started and we went into lockdown, I dusted off my yogurt making supplies and skills. We have enjoyed our homemade yogurt so much and appreciate the flavor so much more that I have continued to make our yogurt. It also helps support our microbiome by providing natural probiotics.
Homemade yogurt can be incubated in a purchased yogurt machine, an InstaPot, a Wonder Oven, an insulated cooler filled with towels, or a dehydrator. I have had 3 commercial yogurt makers each of which have eventually died. I now incubate my yogurt in my Excalibur dehydrator after removing the bottom 5 trays.
I make my yogurt from non-instant powdered milk purchased from the Home Storage Centers operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and use White Mountain Bulgarian style yogurt as a starter. The yogurt is not inexpensive, so I wondered what the cost was to make my own yogurt.
The milk powder is currently $6 for 28 ounces (2024). Twenty-eight ounces is 1.75 pounds which makes 1.75 gallons of milk when you use 3/4 cup powder to make a quart. That comes to $3.43/gallon or .86/quart. I use extra milk powder to make yogurt to help make the yogurt thicker. I use enough powder to make 3 quarts of milk, but only make 2 quarts of liquid milk, so the cost for the yogurt milk is $2.57.
The White Mountain yogurt is $5.12/quart where I live but can be as much as $10/quart. Once the initial purchase is made to use it as a starter, it doesn’t contribute to the cost of the homemade yogurt. I still get the same flavor each time because I’m using the same bacteria culture each time. The succeeding batches of yogurt use a starter from the previous batch to make the current batch.
Using powdered milk in the proportions I do means a quart of yogurt costs about $1.29. That’s one-quarter the cost of the purchased yogurt and can be almost 1/8 the cost if the purchased yogurt is $10. Also, $1.29/quart is almost half what a quart of most house-brand yogurts cost and an even greater savings on name-brand yogurt.
If you like flavored yogurts, flavor your homemade plain yogurt with vanilla, honey, jam, jelly, chopped fruit, or maple syrup. Add sugar to taste.
Plain yogurt can be substituted in whole or in part for sour cream in many recipes. It can be drained until very thick and substituted in whole or in part for cream cheese in many recipes. We prefer plain yogurt to sour cream on top of baked potatoes or nachos and in dips. (see this Dill Dip recipe) My daughter makes a cheese cake that has yogurt added to it for a smooth creamy lighter texture.
I combine the instructions from my last yogurt maker with those from Sophie Kay’s Yogurt Cookery to make my yogurt, but you can find many cookbooks and many online instructions for making yogurt. If your Instapot has a yogurt setting, its instruction book will tell you how to use it.
Once you have your own yogurt started, keep it going by using it regularly, just like sourdough starter. Save money and enjoy preservative free great yogurt.
