Nondairy Yogurt Update

Oh you think you're a crunchy person? Here's my homemade vegan yogurt in mason jars.

Do you remember my quest for the perfect homemade vegan yogurt? My qualifications were two fold:

• Lots of protein and fat to fill up my kid
• Neutral, plain flavor

I settled on a mix of soy milk and coconut milk, added sugar (so the yogurt bacteria had something to eat) and cornstarch (because yogurt really shouldn’t be drinkable). I was happy with it. I made it the same way for 2 years. But then I had to change from pantry stable no sugar added soy milk to the original refrigerated kind. My kid needed some vitamins/minerals that are only found in the “vitamin and mineral blend” that Silk adds to it’s original flavor. Why does it not add it to the unsweetened kind? Why is it not in the pantry stable milk that is in literally the same packaging just a different shape? Beats me. But to get that tricalcium phosphate, I had to switch my recipe.

I was a little concerned. I had fenagled the original recipe a lot to make what I thought was the best nondairy yogurt. Using soy milk that already has sugar in it, I was no longer in control of how much sugar to add. Would using a milk from the fridge make a difference?

But, guys, it was instantly the best vegan yogurt I had ever made. It makes sense that using fresher milk with less preservatives would let the bacteria work better. It makes perfect sense. I just hadn’t really thought about it.

So...

*drum roll*

Introducing the NEW, the IMPROVED, the MOSTLY THE SAME, BUT DEFINTELY BETTER,

BEST VEGAN YOGURT RECIPE 

Ingredients

1/2 gallon Original (Plain) soy milk (from fridge section)
1 can full fat coconut milk
2 tb cornstarch
Yogurt starter (1/4 cup yogurt or a package of dried yogurt starter)

Directions

1.      Heat soy milk, coconut milk, and cornstarch to 180 ^oF, stir occasionally.

2.      Cook at 180 ^oF for 5 minutes.

3.      Remove from heat. Let cool to 110 ^oF

4.      Mix in yogurt/yogurt starter (scoop out about 1 cup of warm milk and combine; then pour that back in bigger pot and stir)

5.      Incubate for at least 8 hours, maintaining as close to 110 ^oF as you can to keep the bacteria happy

a.      Some of the advice online for maintaining this temp: use the yogurt setting on an instant pot (the best). Buy yogurt makers. Put it in your oven with only the light on. Wrap up your crockpot bowl in towels.

b.      Before my instant pot, what worked best to maintain the temperature was filling up jars and wrapping them in towels in a cooler. If the cooler wasn’t packed full of warm milk, I would add a jar or two of hot water to keep the temperature up inside the cooler.

Notes: you don't have to add sugar! It's already in the soy milk. I've also cut the cornstarch IN HALF because the fresher soy milk works so much better, it doesn't need as much thickening. The best news? 1/2 gallon of soy milk from the refrigerated section is much cheaper than 2 quarts of the tetrapak kind.

Happy bacteria! Happy guts!