After I did a cheese making class at our friend Maxine’s place a few weeks ago I got inspired to try to make yoghurt. We had a great time making feta & ricotta (this is so easy I will never buy ricotta again!) and Maxine also makes her own yoghurt which was delicious. She uses a commercial yoghurt making machine and purchases the culture required. I for one don’t want another small appliance anywhere near my kitchen so I did a bit of reading up about making your own yoghurt at home and decided that the steam oven is the perfect appliance to use. Yoghurt needs a constant, accurate temperature for many hours or overnight for it to set. With my steam oven you can set the time and go as low as 40°C with one degree increases so what better appliance to use to set yoghurt perfectly at 43°C. For anyone who has another brand of steam oven that doesn’t have this degree of accuracy then I am sorry I don’t think it will work for you. By all means give it a go at the closest temperature setting you can get, all you will lose is one litre of milk 🙂
I also wanted to try to make yoghurt using a few spoonful’s of commercial yoghurt instead of purchasing the culture and it worked! Make sure you use commercial yoghurt with a ‘live’ culture. Unless it says that on the container then it isn’t live but plenty of good quality yoghurts are easily available now which contain this form of culture.
Ingredients: Makes 1L
1L full cream milk
3 tbsp. commercial plain yoghurt with live culture
Method:
- Sterilise your jars in the steam oven by placing them upside down, with their lids in a perforated tray @ 100°C for 15 minutes.
- While you are doing this heat the milk on the stove until it reaches 82°C. Fill the sink with 3cm of cold water and when the milk reaches temperature then remove the pot from the stove and sit it in the sink to cool.
- Lower the temperature of the milk to 46°C.
- Place the commercial yoghurt into a small mixing bowl.
- Remove one ladle of hot milk from the pot and add to the commercial yoghurt, stir to combine.
- Pour into the sterilised jars, cover and set in the steam oven @ 43°C for 5 hours. Because the temperature is so low I didn’t even need to refill the water container.
- Set another timer to remind you to turn off the steam oven a few minutes before the end of cooking time. This will stop it automatically reducing the steam and cooling the cavity down.
Don’t be tempted to open the door but leave the jars in the steam oven for another 2-3 hours minimum until cool then place in the refrigerator until required.
Easy and delicious served with your favourite fruit. Try with my steamed rhubarb or Winter fruit salad.
I would love to make my own yoghurt in the steam oven. I am so thankful I get your emails. I am new at the steam oven and I felt so lost at first until I discovered your blog. It is like having my personal teacher☺️ So I put the temperature at 43 degrees but how much % do I set the steam? Thanks so much, I love your blog, it is my lifeline for my steam oven. Greetings from Sarah from Seattle, USA.
Hi Sarah thanks for your email.
I have used steam only so my Miele still calls steam a temperature. I am not using the combi oven, only steam. Not sure what brand you have or if you can use steam only at 43oC?
Hope this helps.
Regards Trudy
Hi Trudy,
Nice site.
I use UHT milk, as it does not require the heating of the milk prior to steaming. I also add half a cup of skim powdered milk per litre to increase the thickness, and a teaspoon of vanilla bean extract for flavour.
Cheers, Malcolm.
Thanks Malcolm I will try that 🙂
Regards Trudy
Hi Trudy – I am new to your blog and look forward to some new ideas. I have a Miele steam oven and I just tried to make yoghurt and it was a fail. The steam oven would not go lower than 50 – do you know how if I make it go lower and if not is it possible to make yoghurt at 50 ? I think my effort might have failed as I did not buy “active”yoghurt as a starter. Thanks
Hi Helen,
To my knowledge all Miele steam ovens go from 40o-100oC. Are you sure you have a steam oven not a Moisture Plus Oven with the small water pipe on the side? Sorry you had a fail but you do need to use ‘active’ yoghurt as the culture.
Regards Trudy