Did you know you can make yogurt at home very easily?
You don’t need a yogurt maker. The only ingredient is milk. (For the very first batch, you need a starter — either a small amount of yogurt to use as starter, or a dedicated culture pack.)
Once you’ve made your first batch, you use a spoonful of that yogurt as the starter for the next batch. So as long as you have milk, you have effectively unlimited yogurt.
Some sources online say you should refresh the starter culture every month, but in my case I’ve never done that and it’s been fine. (I do wash the container between batches rather than topping up — maybe that effectively resets things?)
About Caspian Sea Yogurt
We make Caspian Sea yogurt — it’s the thick, slightly stringy kind, more viscous than regular yogurt.
・Difference in fermentation temperature
Regular yogurt prefers around 40–45°C (104–113°F).
Caspian Sea yogurt prefers around 27°C (~80°F).
This is the key: at room temperature in a typical home, Caspian Sea yogurt just ferments on its own — no yogurt maker needed.
How to Make It
Use any food storage container.
I use 500 mL containers, two of them. With just one container, you’d have to keep topping up milk and you’d never have a “rest” batch to actually eat. Two containers is much better.
Spoon some starter yogurt into an empty container — eyeballed amount, like in the photo. (Quantity isn’t critical!)
※ For your very first batch, you can use a commercial starter culture pack, or just buy a small Caspian Sea yogurt from the store and use that.
Use a clean (washed) spoon.
Some sources recommend boiling-water sterilizing the spoon — I’ve never bothered.
Pour milk in.
Use milk that’s labeled as “milk” (i.e., regular milk) on the package category line.
I didn’t know this before, but products labeled as “milk drink” or “processed milk” (like fortified milk products) are not suitable for yogurt-making.
(I haven’t tried it myself, but there are blog posts of people experimenting with non-milk products — they end up with something yogurt-ish but not quite the same.)
Stir with a spoon.
Cover and leave at room temperature until it sets. (I do this in the living room — temperature is most stable there.)
Setting takes about 1 day. In winter it can take 2.
Tilt the container — if it’s set, the yogurt holds its shape.
Move to the fridge for storage.
Done!
