BEN’S ZONE: How to Make Yoghurt from Scratch with the EasiYo

Welcome to a weekly feature on my blog – Ben’s Zone. Written by husband… Ben. A foodie, coffee obsessed, ex-smoking, ex-drinking and Ridgeback loving Dad. Who is also seriously into his fitness.  You can find him on the blog (mostly) on Sundays. Enjoy!

How to Make Yoghurt from Scratch with the EasiYo Yoghurt Maker

As you’ll have seen from last week’s review, I really liked my EasiYo yoghurt maker (gifted) and so I thought about some of the other stuff I could do with it.

The first thing that sprang to mind was ‘what if I can’t get the sachets?’ They’re pretty cheap, cheaper than buying yoghurt in the shop, but could I get things even cheaper?  Without bothering to do any research I ordered a ton of milk and some yoghurt starter and set about planning.  In short order I found that you still have to muck about with heating milk to a certain temperature and then cooling it down to another specific temperature.  I wasn’t having any of that as it takes the ‘Easi’ out of the ‘Yo’ and turns it into ‘Science Experiment Yo’.  So now we have a lot of milk.

I did find though that the EasiYo is popular with homesteading and outdoors folks due to the simplicity and the lack of requirement for an external power source.  Those folks are good at many things and finding a bargain is definitely one of them, so I was able to find a much easier way to get yoghurt from scratch. 

To make yoghurt you need two things, bacteria and milk.  I had the bacteria in the form of the starter but a helpful Australian fellow pointed out that the milk could just as easily be powdered milk. Even better the yawny ‘heat me cool me’ bit wasn’t required.  By jingo, a win all round.  So the first adventure of my trilogy (spoiler alert, 3 recipes, consecutive weeks) is making ghetto EasiYo.

Ingredients:

1 sachet yoghurt starter
160g Milk powder
Tap water

Method:

1. Fill 1 kg EasiYo beaker half way with water.
2. Empty in powdered milk and starter
3. Cap on beaker and shake to combine (spend time here or you’ll get lumpy results)
4. Fill beaker up to near top with more tap water
5. Shake again
6. Put in EasiYo – 8 – 12 hours

Results:

I was very pleased with this, a nice creamy and sharp result, pretty thick as well.  On the form I read, they said you can make it thicker with calcium chloride but mine was plenty thick enough.  Works out about £2.20 per kg of yoghurt.  Flavoured yoghurt in the EasiYo (which I get because the strawberry is to die for) is £2.99 per kg.  My favourite shop bought yoghurt is £4.50 a kg so we’re winning here.