Home-Made Yogurt

One of the thing I've been doing in the Excalibur dehydrator is home-made yogurt. It's pretty simple, tasty (when I don't make a mistake), easy to make with limited ingredients, and I know what's in it.

I start with a pot and 1L of milk (usually one bag of whole milk), and most of the time I add some milk powder (1/4 cup or more, optional), which results in firmer yogurt. Whisk thoroughly, then heat:


Heat that up to 180ºF and either let it start cooling immediately or hold it at that temperature for a little while, say twenty minutes. Some recipes seem to feel this helps convert the milk proteins to make them suitable for yogurt, although I don't find it makes a huge difference.

Let it cool down to 115ºF. Take a ladle-full out, mix in one of these:

• a package of yogurt bacterial culture


• a few tablespoons of commercial yogurt with active culture


• a few tablespoons of your previous batch of homemade yogurt

I usually start with the bacterial culture, do three or four batches in a row using one batch of yogurt to start the next, and then go back to the commercial culture. Some recipes recommend that you avoid using your own culture too many times in a row in case you end up accidentally culturing something else along the way, something that you don't want to be eating in quantity. I'm not convinced that's totally necessary, but commercial cultures aren't terribly expensive, so I don't mind going this route.

Whisk the mixture thoroughly, then return it to the pot and whisk the mixture into the milk thoroughly, then distribute into jars:


This is a reasonable time to add a little sugar, honey, maple, vanilla, if you like. Don't go overboard, you can always add more sweetener later if you like. Put the jars in the dehydrator at 115ºF for four hours to let the culture do its work:


Check on them, if they don't seem firm enough, or you decide you want a very tangy yogurt, you can let it sit another couple of hours in the dehydrator. It won't be at its firmest yet, and there may be some whey at the top. That's ok:


Cap and chill the cans in the fridge, for a while, perhaps overnight. It'll firm up further, as well as cool down:


At this point it's at it's firmest, and is "set" yogurt. If you want to mix in some additional sweetener here you can. If there's whey, you can pour it off or stir it in. If you mix it at this stage it becomes "stirred" yogurt, which many people prefer:


If you want, you can put your yogurt in a cheesecloth or coffee filter overnight to drain some of the whey out, at which point it will become Greek-style yogurt.

Finally, eat, or feed to your children:

Beef Jerky

We bought ourselves a dehydrator this winter with the aid of Pierrette's parents (Christmas present). We've used it for a bunch of things, from vegetable flakes to "raw" crackers, to home-made yogurt.

One of the things I've been using this for is Beef Jerky, dehydrated on wire racks. It's pretty simple, and I like it. I'm still pretty new at it, so I'm not going to get into details like marinades that I'm still experimenting with, but the jerky itself is worth quickly describing.

Basically, you find a cut of meat that's reasonably lean and cut it into strips. Cutting against the grain makes the jerky more tender, although slightly more fragile. Cutting with the grain makes the jerky chewier:

I'm still working on finding cuts that I'm happy with, but since fat doesn't dehydrate as well and spoils more easily, you want to keep the fat to a minimum. Large strips, especially on the outside, can be trimmed off, but marbling is too spread out to be removed:

Grass-fed beef is probably better than grain-fed, here, and alternative meats like Bison might be worth further investigation. These are fruitful paths of investigation for me. It's often easier to cut your meat thinly if you cool it to near-freezing in advance, which makes the meat more firm, and thus easier to slice.

You can marinate it at this stage, although simply adding some salt and pepper and letting it cure a little overnight is tasty. I've experimented a little with marinades, but it's too soon to form strong opinions. After that, you put it in the dehydrator at 155ºF and give it 4-6h.

When it's done, it should be pliable and not brittle. I'm still working out the details on exactly when it's done. Taking it out sooner tends to make the jerky more tender, but if you take it out too soon, it won't be thoroughly dehydrated and will spoil. Getting that balance right can be tricky.

Once you're done, pack it up, store it and eat it. If you're new to jerky, refrigerating some of it is probably not a bad idea. If some of it spoils, you won't lose the whole batch.

Yum.