Instant Pot Yogurt With UHT Milk

 

Yogurt, oats, and fruit. Credit: RitaE/Pixabay

One of my favorite sitcoms from the 90s, Father Ted, had a memorable line about UHT milk when Dougal has to be a milkman for a day:

"You better get going actually. Milk gets sour you know. Unless it's UHT milk, but there's no demand for that because it's shite."

I love the idea of shelf stable milk, but I'll choose almond milk over UHT milk on my cereal any day. One thing I've found it great for is yogurt. It has a thick consistency possibly because of the ultra-high temp processing it goes through. Whatever the reason, I've been happy with results. 

Even better is that I can make it easily with no fuss in an Instant Pot cooker.  I have an off-brand pressure cooker, and it works just the same.  

Here's my easy recipe and process.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 quarts UHT milk
• Yogurt starter (i.e. 4 tablespoons plain yogurt or freeze-dried yogurt starter - I've used both, see note below)

PROCESS:

Pour milk into cooker.  Stir in yogurt starter.  Place lid on cooker and set pressure valve to venting position.  Cook on the yogurt setting for 8-12 hours.

When done, remove lid and take 4 tablespoons out to freeze as starter for your next batch. Sweeten to taste if you like. I use 4 packets of stevia sweetener for this amount. You can place it in jars in the fridge at this point, but I like to strain mine through a thin sack dishtowel for a couple hours to make it thicker. You can leave the sweetener out if you want to use it as a sour cream substitute. I sometimes divide mine in two and have one sweet and one sour.  That's it! Enjoy your homemade yogurt.

Notes:  You can use 2 quarts of regular milk, low-fat or whole. I add 1/3 cup of Nido milk powder to low-fat milk to get the consistency I want. I've used regular and Greek yogurt as starter. The brand of freeze dried starter I use is Yo Gourmet. The instructions say to use 5 g per 1 quart. I've been able to save starter from batches up to three times. I haven't tried it beyond that, though I've read comments online from people who've kept their starter going for several months.

© P.J. Deneen