The Cost of Homemade Yogurt

Yogurt bought from the store is usually loaded with sugar and expensive. For example, a single six-ounce Yoplait strawberry yogurt contains 26 grams of sugar and costs about 79 cents.

In contrast, homemade yogurt contains only natural sugar from milk and flavorings, and costs less. A single six-ounce homemade strawberry yogurt contains only 11 grams of sugar (if made from skim milk and flavored with two medium-sized strawberries) and costs only 36 cents.

As for taste, homemade yogurt may take getting used to, but it's delicious. Once used to its taste and texture, it'd be difficult to go back to store bought.

One needn't be a chef to make homemade yogurt. Making it is simple.

Here's how to start making delicious, healthy and inexpensive yogurt.

The simplest way to make homemade yogurt is with an automatic yogurt maker. Yogurt makers are made by Euro Cuisine, Yogourmet, Yolife and other companies, and cost $25 to $50.

A popular yogurt maker is the Euro Cuisine YM100 model. Its average customer rating is 4.5 stars (out of 5) at Amazon, and it costs $36.99.

The Euro Cuisine YM100 yogurt maker includes a pilot lamp and convenient timer. It comes complete with seven glass jars with screw tops. There's also a detailed instruction book with step-by-step instructions for plain yogurt and flavored yogurt recipes.

Other equipment needed to make homemade yogurt include a high-sided saucepan and a mixing bowl. While not strictly necessary, it's also convenient to have a whisk and a food thermometer (capable of measuring temperatures up to 180 degrees F).

The basic recipe for making plain yogurt using the Euro Cuisine YM100 couldn't be much simpler.

1. Start by pouring seven glass jars (42 ounces) of milk into the high-sided saucepan. You can use whole milk, 2%, 1%, skim milk, powdered milk, sterilized milk or soy milk. Heat the milk to 180 degrees F. Or, if you don't have a thermometer, heat the milk until it starts to climb the side of the saucepan.

2. Remove the saucepan from the stove and cool the milk to lukewarm (110 degrees F). Place the pan in cold water to accelerate the cooling process (see photo at right).

3. Scoop six ounces of plain yogurt with live yogurt culture into the mixing bowl, and then pour in 16 ounces of the lukewarm milk. Stir until the yogurt is completely dissolved and the mixture is smooth. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan with the rest of the lukewarm milk.

4. Pour the mixture into the seven jars, place the jars (without their lids) into the yogurt maker and cover the yogurt maker with its clear plastic cover.

5. Set the timer to seven hours if you used whole milk or 10 hours if you used skimmed milk, and press the red pilot lamp to turn on the yogurt maker.

6. The yogurt maker will automatically beep and shut off when the yogurt is ready. Then cover the seven jars with their lids and place them into the refrigerator. The yogurt will be ready to eat after three hours.

7. Serve the yogurt with flavorings. It's easy to serve the yogurt over fruit such as strawberries, blueberries or bananas (see the photo at right).

The homemade yogurt is healthy.

A six-ounce serving of skim milk contains only nine grams of sugar, and two medium-sized strawberries contain only about two grams of sugar. Thus, a single six-ounce homemade strawberry yogurt contains only 11 grams of sugar.

In contrast, a single six-ounce Yoplait strawberry yogurt contains 26 grams of sugar. Thus, the homemade yogurt will have less than half the sugar of the Yoplait yogurt.

The homemade yogurt is also inexpensive.

Each six-ounce serving of homemade yogurt includes six ounces of milk, two medium-sized strawberries, and one-twelfth of a six-ounce plain yogurt starter (assuming a second batch of yogurt is made from the last jar of the first batch). At $3.00 per gallon, the six-ounces of milk will cost 14 cents. At $2.50 for a container of 25 medium-sized strawberries, the two strawberries will cost 16 cents. At 79 cents for a six-ounce plain yogurt starter, the cost-per-jar of the yogurt starter will be 6 cents. Thus, the homemade yogurt will cost about 36 cents per serving.

In contrast, the cost of a single six-ounce Yoplait strawberry yogurt is about 79 cents. Thus, the homemade yogurt will cost less than half as much as the Yoplait yogurt.

Assuming your family eats just one serving of yogurt daily, you should recoup the $36.99 price of the yogurt maker in 86 days, or less than three months!