Caramelized Yogurt

Some cultures like to cook the milk down for yogurt. The most famous of these is ryazhenka, from Russia. The milk is baked at a very low temperature until it’s caramelized, then it’s cultured. This is basically how I make it, except I lack the attention span required to remember I’m baking milk until it’s way too late. Thus, I use the crock pot.

This is Child Tester’s favorite way for me to make her yogurt, and I admit I only do it because I get more honest reviews about the various yogurts she’s trying (or trying again). She was delighted that I did not take the pictures I thought I did last time I did this, resulting in a brand new batch for her!

You also can customize this to the level of caramelization you prefer. If sweet yogurts are your thing, you want to cook your milk until it looks like a light caramel candy.

This is darker than CT will eat it, because she really does prefer to maintain some tartness in her yogurts. If you’re one of the people who feels that even the sweetest yogurt is a bit too tart, try a small (like, half a cup) batch cooked down to this. You might really enjoy it!

Otherwise? Go lighter.

In reality, I find she eats it best if it’s got just the barest hint of golden color. Once it’s in the browner territories, she typically will only eat it in smoothies.

So what you do is to put however much milk you want to cook down into your crock pot or in a pot on your stove. The intensity of my desire to be able to walk away from what I’m cooking means I always use a crock pot. You do it the way you prefer.

Turn the crock pot onto low (if it has a setting; the crock pot I use for this purpose does not) and leave the lid off. Let it cook; you are looking to see it condense, and that happens faster if you leave the lid off while it cooks. At some point, you’ll see a film on the top, like in the picture below. You can see that I was in the process of removing that layer before I remembered to take a picture. My milk volume dropped by .75-1 inch from the level I’d initially poured in. This is generally CT’s sweet spot, though sometimes I really do cook it longer.

Once it’s dropped down and you can see that the color has begun to shift, go on ahead and remove the film on the top. Or cook it longer, as you prefer.

This is the color once I removed the film. You can see it’s still mostly white, but not that more intense white color fresh milk has. Again, this is my kid’s sweet spot, and she’s the primary consumer of yogurt in our home. Well, yogurt as yogurt. I cook and bake all the time with yogurt, but Ross and I don’t tend to eat yogurt as its own food.

Once you’ve got it cooked to how you like it (or think you’ll like it), unplug or otherwise turn off your crock pot or stove. You can remove the crock from the heating element if you prefer, or just leave it all together until you’re ready to make it.

After this, you’ll let your yogurt cool to room temperature if you’re making mesophils, to about 95 if thermophils. I know a lot of y’all prefer to make your yogurts with rockin’ hot milk, but your yogurts will love you more if you let them incubate a bit more on the cooler end of the spectrum.

After it’s cooled to the needed temp, go on ahead and start your yogurt! As for me, I finished cooking the milk right before I was going to head to bed, so I tossed it in the fridge until morning, divided it into my containers, and used the cold start method in my Instant Pot.

Back when I could still handle the texture of yogurt, I used to add honey drizzle and berries. This looked so good I tried it, but nope. Still not good with yogurt as its own food!