yogurt for Jill

this is my mom's yogurt recipe that she's been using since 2006. she always uses nido powdered milk.



in bowl, mix together 6 cups of water with 3 and 2/3 cups powdered milk. whisk well.

add a few ounces of yogurt... anywhere between 2 tablespoons and 6 ounces.  I don't measure it.

it's important to use yogurt where the only ingredients are milk and cultures.

whisk it all very, very well and pour into containers of your choice.

 in your instant pot, pour a cup of water and place the trivet on top. then put in your jars of yogurt.

I put a towel on top to help with the condensation because I don't have lids for my jars.

press yogurt and adjust the time up to at least 7 hours.  the longer you leave it, the thicker and tangier it'll be.  since it doesn't come to pressure (it's just like a crock pot for this), I set it for 9 hours and just choose to check on it periodically after the 7 hour mark. make sure it's at NORMAL... not less or more.

unlike instant pot pressure cooking settings, the timer counts UP so you know how many minutes/hours your yogurt has been in there.

when it's done, place your jars directly into the fridge.  when it's completely cooled and set, you can stir in a bit of sugar/vanilla. 

notes:

in the beginning, I heat 2-4 cups of water in the microwave and stir that in really well with the powdered milk (I feel like it's easier to mix when it's warm) and then stir in the rest of the water and yogurt... but maybe you don't spill as much as I do when I stir impatiently.

as soon as your yogurt is done and before you've sweetened it, go ahead and set some aside in a little container to use as your starter for next time so you never have to buy yogurt again.

I haven't done it, but you could just stir everything and make the yogurt directly in the instant pot.  that just doesn't appeal to me as much because then, after it cools, you have to scrape your thick yogurt out of the instant pot into containers for the fridge and that sounded like more work. 

it would probably be smart to start this at night and let it work its magic all night while you sleep, but I haven't tried that yet because I never seem to think about yogurt at night.

I'm sure it's probably cheaper to make yogurt with regular milk instead of using the powdered milk but cold start yogurt like this (where you don't boil it first) requires either shelf stable or powdered milk or ultra pasteurized milk (like the fair life brand).  If you want to do yogurt with regular milk, you need to do the traditional recipe where you boil it first (you have to kill off the bacteria in the milk by boiling it or else the milk bacteria will compete with the yogurt bacteria and it'll never get firm or set up) and wait for it to cool down before you add your yogurt starter.