Homemade Yogurt - a few tips!
Updated August 21, 2025
Yogurt is surprisingly easy to make. A few simple tools, a few specific points to remember, and some time. Will it come out super thick and Greek-yogurt-ish? Not that I’ve found. But making that thick yogurt is again surprisingly easy: a few simple tools, a few points to remember, and some time.
Basics for homemade yogurt! (minus one tool)
Yogurt starts (no pun intended) with a starter. You can buy commercial starter packs (I love the ones from New England Cheesemaking Company; they’re also available in many magasins here in French Polynesia) or, even simpler, use some yogurt you have on hand. A good starter yogurt specifics:
plain (not flavored)
have LIVE or ACTIVE cultures (it’ll say this right on the label)
NO gelatin
After that, you need milk* (fresh or powdered are the ones I’ve used; though general wisdom is that long life (UHT) milk will not work, I know at least one cruiser who has successfully used such products), and . . . well, nothing. Just the tools. I find powdered milk incredibly simple to use (saves at least one pot) and has the added benefit on our small boat that we can mix up exactly the amount we want instead of opening a quart-sized carton of UHT milk. Neither of us drinks milk, preferring to use yogurt with our morning granola.
The tools?
wide mouth thermos (wide mouth so you can clean it easily)
cheesemaking or instant thermometer
Sure, you can buy specialty yogurt making machines, or a self-contained thermos-like contraption called an EasiYo. These are awesome and fun and take a tiny bit of work out of the process. But on Calypso, we’re all about items that have multiple uses and don’t take up much space. In reality, I don’t use this thermos for anything other than yogurt making. I could, though.
The process: (props to Carolyn Shearlock at The Boat Galley for the basics here!) This is for a 3-cup thermos!
Fill the thermos with water, which you’ll then bring to a boil in a saucepan.
Meanwhile, whisk 1 generous cup milk powder with 1/2 c tap water in a bowl large enough to handle your eventual 3 cups of liquid.
When the water has come to a boil, turn off the heat and whisk 2 cups into the milk mixture., then pour the rest into the thermos and cap it; this will preheat the thermos while you finish prepping the yogurt mixture.
Once the milk has cooled to between 110 and 120 Farenheit, whisk in 1-2 TBS of yogurt starter (you REALLY don’t need a lot of the starter!)
Pour the water that’s been in the thermos back into the saucepan to be used for another purpose.
Pour starter-infused milk into the warmed Thermos and cap the Thermos
Let sit for 5-10 hours, depending on your schedule. I usually mix this before lunch and decant it after dinner.
Boom. Homemade yogurt.
Making thickened, Greek-style yogurt is a matter of straining out the whey.
Line a colander with a couple of layers of cheesecloth. Put a bowl underneath it to catch the whey - I use this as the liquid when I make bread!
Dump yogurt into the cheesecloth contraption
Let drain for at least an hour. The longer it drains, the thicker it will get. Letting it drain for 6-8 hours will net you something like a yogurt cheese, a mild, spreadable product which is lovely on crackers or toast.
You don’t have to refrigerate the yogurt as it’s draining but you might want to loosely cover it to protect it from bugs.
Details worth noting:
Milk. We don’t normally keep fresh milk on hand as neither of us drinks milk. To make yogurt, powdered full-fat milk is the way to go. The non-fat stuff you find everywhere in the US is pretty tasteless. Full-fat milk powder is hard to find inside the US, though lately I’ve found Nido brand inexpensively at Walmart. UHT milk is available in most grocery stores. Here in French Polynesia, excellent full-fat powdered milk from New Zealand is both readily available AND subsidized, meaning it’s affordable.
Thermometer. Digital: Look for one with controls on the front side as well as one that indicates when a temperature has stabilized. I use the dial one linked above.
Cheesecloth. Not reusable in my experience, mostly because if you try to wash it it falls apart thread-wise. I’ve bought washable flour-sack dish cloths that can sub in a pinch but because they’re less porous, it takes longer to drain the yogurt.
Breakfast on Calypso is usually toast or granola. It’s immensely satisfying when we sit down to a bowl of granola with yogurt and know it’s all homemade!