Making Greek-style yogurt with homemade *or* store-bought plain yogurt

This is part 2 of Making Yogurt for Dirt Cheap.

First of all, I forgot to mention in yesterday's post on freezing starter, how to thaw starter for use.

• Thaw only what you need for one batch.
• Thaw in fridge overnight, or
• on counter for 3 to 4 hours. 
• Don't thaw with heat (microwave or stove). 

My unplanned, unorganized method -- when I first get up, I take one 6-oz container of starter from the freezer and leave on the counter. By the time I'm ready to use it, it's thawed completely.

Now, on to making your own Greek-style yogurt.

Greek yogurt appears to be one of the new super foods. It's packed with nutrients. Lots of active cultures, heaps of protein, and less sodium and carbohydrates than traditional yogurt. It makes a good substitute for mayo, sour cream and cream cheese in sandwich and cracker spreads, and dips. Plus, it's lower in lactose than traditional yogurt, which is already a reduced lactose product. The process of making yogurt lowers the lactose in milk, plus straining out additional whey removes even more. For me, Greek yogurt is one of just a couple of dairy products that I can eat.

But, Greek yogurt in the store is a tad expensive for what you're really getting. It's just plain yogurt, which has been strained to remove whey. Nothing complicated about it.

I use homemade yogurt to make Greek-style. You can also turn commercial, plain yogurt into Greek-style, too. It's simple, requires minimal hands-on time, and can save you a buck or two on your Greek yogurt fix.

Take a mesh sieve and place over a bowl. Line with a paper coffee filter, or several layers of cheesecloth.

Spoon plain yogurt into filter. (I can fit about 3 cups of yogurt into my sieve at a time.) Place in the fridge, and wait. Out of 3 cups of yogurt, 1/2 cup of whey drains off in about 1 hour. We're satisfied with a final product that has about 1/3 (1 cup) of the water/whey removed, which takes about 3 hours.

When the desired consistency is reached, scoop into a container, cover and refrigerate. That's it.
Greek yogurt keeps for a couple of weeks.

My homemade, Greek-style yogurt costs about 80 to 85 cents per quart. Now that's dirt cheap for Greek-style yogurt.


You can save the whey to use as liquid in quick breads or muffins. Whey is nutritious in its own right. It contains protein, calcium, potassium and Vit B-2. You could pour the whey down the drain, but why not use it as a nutritional boost to the foods you cook?!

Freezing yogurt to use as starter for future batches (or making yogurt for dirt cheap)

(This link has the full article from 2012, which details how I make yogurt.)

I had a request, recently, for more information on how to make yogurt for dirt cheap. So, I thought I'd share what I do, and what I've found that works for me.

The primary cost is the whole milk. I look for it on markdown -- milk that is close to it's sell-by date. Turning milk into yogurt extends the life of that milk. So, if there's just 1 week before the sell-by date on the milk, I know that I can make it into yogurt the next day and have the yogurt still be good for another few weeks. Traditionally, yogurt-making was a simple food preservation technique. The yogurt contains cultures which produce lactic acid, which, in turn, retards spoilage of milk (see here, article in Mother Earth News).

So, buying whole milk when marked down, due to nearing the sell-by date, is my first step in making yogurt for dirt cheap (most of the time, I spend under $2 for a gallon of whole milk, which makes 3  1/2 quarts of thick yogurt). If I find more whole milk on discount than I need for yogurt-making right away, I freeze the milk and make yogurt at a later date.

My second step for dirt cheap yogurt is free yogurt starter.

I've been making yogurt for 2  1/2 years now, about 2 times per month. For my first batch, I bought one 6-oz container of Yoplait vanilla yogurt for 39 cents. I've been using descendants of that first batch for about 50 batches, now. Based on a price of 39 cents per container of Yoplait, I've saved over $19 on yogurt starter.

What's my secret? I have a method that seems to work for me. I freeze my own homemade yogurt as starter for successive batches.

Some people chain-yogurt (using a bit from each previous batch to make the current batch). I prefer to freeze my starter in quantities large enough to make several batches. The advantage, here, is that if I don't get around to making a new batch of yogurt for a few weeks, I have viable starter waiting for me in the freezer. Yogurt cultures only remain viable in the fridge for about a week to 10 days.

Every 4 or 5 batches, the day immediately following making a fresh batch (after I'm sure it has set), I scoop 6 ounces of yogurt each into 5 or 6 freezer containers.

This is important -- I wait until the day after I have made yogurt (and the yogurt has incubated in my cooler filled with 115F degree water plus has had a chance to finish setting-up in the fridge) to take some yogurt to freeze for future starter. 

I label and date each container. Frozen yogurt can remain viable for many months in the freezer, but why push it. This last batch (1/6/14) was made with yogurt dated June 2013. So, I know for sure that my freezing methods work for 6 to 7 months from the point of incubating to the point of using it as starter. I keep these containers of starter in a 0 degree F freezer.

I never let myself use the last container of frozen yogurt, but always keep one in reserve, just in case I do something wrong in the yogurting process.

I've read that eventually the bacterial strains will die out, and I'll have yogurt that doesn't set. But I'm putting this off by freezing several batch-starters at a time. Meaning that I'm probably only about 8 descendants from my original batch made with the 39-cent container of Yoplait.

My yogurt costs me 55 to 60 cents per quart. For our budget, that is dirt cheap.

Update on freezing yogurt starter and its viability

It's March 2019 and I am still using yogurt starter from previous batches. I recently found 3 containers of starter in a 0 degree F freezer, dated June 2017. I successfully made batches of yogurt with that starter. The yogurt is just as thick as my original batches. My hope is that you have as much success with freezing 2nd day homemade yogurt to use as starter as I have.

Another update on freezing my homemade yogurt for use as starter
Here it is January of 2020. I never would have believed this would be possible but I am still using quantities of yogurt as starter which are descendants of that original container of Yoplait, bought in 2012. Yes, I've been freezing small amounts of each batch of homemade yogurt, then using those as starter for subsequent batches. I have never had to buy more yogurt to use as starter. The resulting yogurt is thick and tart -- just the way I like it.

Happy yogurting!