This new year, we are all about bringing you healthy ways of eating.
Making food yourself at home, rather than buying from a grocery store (minus a few exceptions), is the healthiest option for you and your family; you know every ingredient that’s in your creation without raising an eyebrow at a nutrition/ingredient label.
Stocking your pantry with healthy, homemade goods is not only beneficial for your family, but it makes for a great hobby. With each new homemade dish or item, you learn something you didn’t know, and get to experience a more hands-on approach with what you are eating. And what’s more satisfying than creating (and loving) food from your own kitchen?
SHIFT’s Locavore Pantry demonstrated just that, how to stock your pantry with healthy, homemade recipes. Mother Nature Nutrition shared recipes for yogurt, kefir, and paneer.
There are plenty of other homemade goodies to stock your pantry: canning jams and jellies, pickling, making homemade condiments; the options are endless.
Thanks to Mother Nature Nutrition, a local health consultant, I discovered you can also create your own dairy products at home. I never really thought about making dairy products myself; I try to limit dairy, but if and when I do buy it, I always buy the healthiest kind I can find. But, now I am happy to share that homemade yogurt is possible – in fact, making Greek yogurt couldn’t be easier if you do your research and find the right product. This dairy product, when purchased at a grocery store, can often be full of sugar and lacking the appropriate bacteria for gut health (it’s common goal); however, when making this yogurt recipeat home, you control the process, therefore controlling just how healthy it is.
Here is how you can make yogurt at home.
Ingredients
- 1/2 gallon whole milk
- 1/2 cup plain, full fat yogurt
- Supplies:
- Heavy-bottomed, non-metal pot
- Instant-read or candy thermometer
- Small measuring cup or bowl
- Whisk
- Spatula
Instructions
- Pour the milk into the pot and set over medium to medium-high heat.
- Warm the milk to right below boiling. Stir the milk gently as it heats to make sure the bottom doesn't scorch and the milk doesn't boil over.
- Cool the milk until it's just warm to the touch, about 112 to 115 F. Stir occasionally to prevent a skin from forming.
- Scoop out about a cup of warm milk with a measuring cup and it add the yogurt. Whisk until smooth.
- Pour the thinned yogurt into the warm milk while whisking gently.
- Set the yogurt at 110 F in one of three ways:
- 1. Use an electric yogurt maker
- 2. Use a yogurt incubator
- 3. Use the oven (Cover the pot with the lid and place the whole pot in a gas oven with the pilot light on or an electric oven with the oven light on. Check yours to make sure the temp is around 110 F.
- Let it set for at least 24 hours. Avoid jostling or stirring the yogurt until it has fully set.)
- Cool the yogurt. If you set the yogurt in a pot in the oven, transfer to jars with lids and refrigerate. Homemade yogurt will keep for a bout 2 weeks in the refrigerator.
- For your next batch of homemade yogurt save 1/2 cup of recently made yogurt to use as a starter for your next batch.
*Mother Nature Nutrition specializes in nutritional consulting, group classes, grocery store tours, detox support and cooking demonstrations. Check out her website to learn more.
