Making yoghurt

My sister gave me a wonderful and very thoughtful Christmas present this year, a yoghurt maker. Now I have made yoghurt lots of times before with various results. The method I used most often was to put the milk/yoghurt mixture in a flask for a few hours to maintain the temperature required. The downside of this method was that it was a little bit hit and miss. Sometimes it would come out very well, but other times I would end up with a grainy mixture that looked a little curdled and other times it would separate too much, leaving me a lot of buttermilk and not so much yoghurt. The other downside was that the flask got very smelly. Hard to clean out a flask with a small opening that has contained yoghurt.

Well this yoghurt maker that I was given is very simple. It works on the same principle as a slow cooker, maintaining a very low but constant temperature while the yoghurt is made. It is cheap to run, even cheaper than a slow cooker and the yoghurt it made was absolutely perfect.

The principle is an easy one. 2 teaspoons of live yoghurt and a litre of milk. I always use UHT milk because it saves the hassle of having to boil and sterilise ordinary milk. Put the milk and yoghurt in the maker, turn it on and in 8 hours lovely creamy yoghurt. It is really really good, very perfect.

I am sure it is possible to achieve equally good results without it, but I must admit, I sort of wandered away from making yoghurt because my results before were so hit and miss. This makes life much easier. 

And the best bit? 2 teaspoons of this yoghurt will go to make another litre of the stuff when I am running low. Eternal, cheap yoghurt if I organise myself. This will do breakfast every day and I am going to look up other things I can do with it now that I have such a large, cheap supply (about 80p for a litre of yoghurt)