How to use a yogurt maker: detailed instructions for use and care

The grow­ing fash­ion for a healthy lifestyle makes yogurt mak­ers one of the most pop­u­lar items in house­hold appli­ance stores. But for mak­ing home­made yoghurts, it’s not enough to buy a use­ful device — you need to learn how to use it cor­rect­ly.

Principle of operation

The main pur­pose of the yogurt mak­er is to main­tain a con­stant tem­per­a­ture regime nec­es­sary for fer­ment­ing fer­ment­ed milk prod­ucts. As a rule, the degree of heat­ing of the device does not exceed 37–38 degrees. This tem­per­a­ture allows liv­ing bac­te­ria to fer­ment milk sug­ar, even­tu­al­ly turn­ing milk into yogurt. At the same time, as a result of cook­ing, vit­a­mins and bifi­dobac­te­ria, which are ben­e­fi­cial to the human body, are com­plete­ly pre­served in food. In addi­tion, you can be sure that there are no unwant­ed fla­vors, preser­v­a­tives and thick­en­ers in the com­po­si­tion of the dish.

The design of the yogurt mak­er is ele­men­tary, con­sist­ing of:

• a clos­ing lid of the con­tain­er in which the man­u­fac­tur­ing process takes place;
• a heat­ing ele­ment that con­tin­u­ous­ly main­tains the opti­mum tem­per­a­ture;
• plas­tic or met­al hous­ing with ther­mal­ly insu­lat­ed thick­ened walls;
• ther­mo­stat.

The tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics and func­tion­al­i­ty of dif­fer­ent mod­els dif­fer lit­tle from each oth­er — when buy­ing equip­ment, you should focus pri­mar­i­ly on the vol­ume of the work­ing cham­ber. For a fam­i­ly of 4, it is bet­ter to choose a yogurt mak­er with a capac­i­ty of 8 jars, each with a vol­ume of 125–250 ml.

Jars sold as a set are usu­al­ly made of plas­tic or glass. The glass option is con­sid­ered more con­ve­nient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, but its use is asso­ci­at­ed with the risk of break­ing. Some man­u­fac­tur­ers offer to pur­chase an addi­tion­al set of con­tain­ers if you plan to fre­quent­ly pre­pare fer­ment­ed milk prod­ucts. There is a rather orig­i­nal solu­tion to the prob­lem of lack of con­tain­ers — baby food jars are ide­al for such use.

The pres­ence of a sound timer and auto-off sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the cost of the device. Despite the appar­ent con­ve­nience, these func­tions are not so impor­tant in use — after the end of cook­ing, the yogurt must be rearranged for cool­ing any­way.

A sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage of the device is low pow­er con­sump­tion. The pow­er of the yogurt mak­er ranges from 5–15 W — enough to con­tin­u­ous­ly main­tain the set tem­per­a­ture inside the appli­ance.

House­wives notice that the pur­chase of a yogurt mak­er pays off in a few months, thanks to the low cost of raw mate­ri­als. So with its help, you can not only teach your fam­i­ly to eat healthy, but also sig­nif­i­cant­ly save your home bud­get.

What can be cooked in a yogurt maker?

Despite the name, the yogurt mak­er is able to pre­pare any fer­ment­ed milk prod­uct, depend­ing on the starter used and the rec­om­mend­ed fer­men­ta­tion time, for exam­ple:

• sour cream;
• fer­ment­ed baked milk;
• cot­tage cheese;
• yogurt;
• bifi­doc;
• kefir;
• Varenets;
• cur­dled milk.

Almost every yogurt mak­er comes with a book of recipes ver­i­fied by the man­u­fac­tur­er. With it, it is easy to cre­ate curd desserts, drink­able yogurt options and even food for the first feed­ing.

To enrich the taste, it is allowed to add a filler to the fin­ished prod­uct: berries or fruits, jam or choco­late chips. Thus, you can con­stant­ly change the taste of yogurt, while main­tain­ing the ben­e­fits of bifi­dobac­te­ria in it.

How to use a yogurt maker to make yogurt in it?

Nat­ur­al yoghurt of own pro­duc­tion con­sists of two prod­ucts:

• milk;
• leav­en.

What starter culture to use for yogurt maker?

Yogurt with­out indus­tri­al addi­tives can be used as it, but fer­ment­ed milk prod­ucts are best obtained on the basis of a spe­cial starter cul­ture. It is usu­al­ly sold in phar­ma­cy chains or health food stores, along with detailed instruc­tions for use.

Sub­se­quent­ly, it is allowed to pre­pare yogurt using the residues from the pre­vi­ous fer­men­ta­tion, in this case, 100 grams of the fin­ished fer­ment­ed milk prod­uct is tak­en per liter of milk.

What kind of milk to use for yogurt maker?

Milk should be cho­sen the fresh­est, and boiled before cook­ing. This will destroy the unwant­ed microflo­ra present in unpas­teur­ized raw mate­ri­als, prepar­ing a favor­able envi­ron­ment for the fur­ther repro­duc­tion of ben­e­fi­cial bifi­dobac­te­ria.

The con­sis­ten­cy of yogurt will depend on the fat con­tent of milk — the fat­ter it is, the thick­er and tasti­er the dish will turn out. The best option would be to use home­made or farm prod­ucts. Whole raw mate­ri­als have the opti­mal ratio in terms of calo­rie con­tent and taste prop­er­ties.

Veg­e­tar­i­ans can use soy milk to make yogurt — how­ev­er, such an exper­i­ment may require addi­tion­al fer­men­ta­tion time. Milk of plant ori­gin does not have to be boiled, it is sold already pas­teur­ized.

Instructions for making yogurt in a yogurt maker

The fer­men­ta­tion time of yogurt on aver­age takes 6–10 hours, while direct par­tic­i­pa­tion in cook­ing is 10–15 min­utes. The step by step process of mak­ing home­made yogurt is as fol­lows:

• Ster­il­iza­tion. Before cook­ing, it is nec­es­sary to ster­il­ize all con­tain­ers that come into con­tact with the prod­uct, after thor­ough­ly wash­ing off the rem­nants of deter­gent from it. As ster­il­iza­tion, it is allowed to use heat­ing in a microwave oven, a dou­ble boil­er or rins­ing with boil­ing water.
• Mix­ing of raw mate­ri­als. After boil­ing, the milk cools at room tem­per­a­ture to 40 degrees — you can con­trol the degree of cool­ing tac­tile­ly, to a com­fort­able envi­ron­ment for your fin­ger. Then the required amount of leav­en is added to the liq­uid and thor­ough­ly mixed with a ster­ile cut­lery.
• Pour­ing into con­tain­ers. The result­ing mix­ture should be care­ful­ly poured into the select­ed con­tain­ers — glass or plas­tic jars, a deep plate or con­tain­er. Drops of milk that have fall­en by should be thor­ough­ly wiped off.
• Turn on the yogurt mak­er. The filled con­tain­er must be installed in the work­ing cham­ber, and then close the device with a lid. Turn on the elec­tri­cal appli­ance.
• Set­ting the timer. The time inter­val is set depend­ing on the type of starter — the exact infor­ma­tion on the fer­men­ta­tion peri­od is con­tained in the attached instruc­tions.
• End of cook­ing. After the yogurt reach­es the desired con­sis­ten­cy, the con­tain­er must be rearranged in the refrig­er­a­tor, clos­ing the lid. This is nec­es­sary to com­plete the repro­duc­tion of lac­tic bac­te­ria, oth­er­wise the prod­uct may acquire exces­sive sour­ness. After each use, the device must be unplugged.

Yogurt is con­sid­ered ready after com­plete cool­ing, final­ly thick­en­ing. If, after cool­ing, the con­sis­ten­cy of the final prod­uct turned out to be watery, it is nec­es­sary to increase the fer­men­ta­tion time dur­ing the next fer­men­ta­tion.

See also a detailed video on how to cook sour cream and yogurt in a yogurt mak­er:

You can read about all the nuances of mak­ing yogurt in a yogurt mak­er and about var­i­ous recipes for home­made yogurt in this arti­cle: https://sovetexpert.ru/gotovim-jogurt-v-jogurtnice.html.

The shelf life of home-made prod­ucts in the refrig­er­a­tor is no more than 5–7 days, but sour-milk prod­ucts become tasti­est the next day after fer­men­ta­tion.

Care of the yogurt maker

The yogurt mak­er does not require spe­cial care — keep­ing it clean con­sists in reg­u­lar­ly wip­ing the body and lid with a damp cloth. Before doing this, make sure that the device is dis­con­nect­ed from the mains. Yogurt jars should be washed imme­di­ate­ly after being emp­tied, in hot water with deter­gent or in the dish­wash­er.

The yogurt mak­er, like any tech­nique, should not be dropped or hit, so it is bet­ter to store it out of the reach of chil­dren. It is con­ve­nient if the man­u­fac­tur­er pro­vides a com­part­ment for the cord — in this case, it will not get con­fused and inter­fere.

Despite the fact that the yogurt mak­er is an ele­men­tary device, sim­i­lar in func­tion to an ordi­nary ther­mos, its use­ful­ness in the kitchen is unde­ni­able. The yogurt mak­er is very easy to use. Pre­pare healthy del­i­ca­cies, exper­i­ment, try new fla­vor com­bi­na­tions — and all this while tak­ing care of your fam­i­ly’s health!