I have been making my own yoghurt for a few years now. It is cheaper than buying, surprisingly easy, and I find it rather satisfying. While visiting my Mum in Bekasi, Indonesia, I found myself craving my usual homemade yoghurt, but in a foreign kitchen without my usual equipment. I decided to experiment and see just how much I could improvise. Faced with this situation, what would MacGyver do?

I started with 1 litre of UHT milk and a small tub of yoghurt from the local supermarket.

UHT milk and tub of yoghurt from Superindo supermarket

First, I boiled the milk, then cooled it down to what I thought was the correct temperature. I didn’t have my food thermometer, so I had to use the dip-the-finger technique that was first taught to me a few years ago by my Sri Lankan friend when I first learnt to make yoghurt. I blended some of the heated milk with about half the tub of yoghurt, then mixed it all together.

Half tub of yoghurt into bowl

Bowl to milk

In my early yoghurt-making days, I used an EasiYo yoghurt maker, essentially a glorified esky, to maintain the optimum temperature of 40°C-ish for as long as possible. These days I use an oven, turning it on and off at two/three-hour intervals to maintain that temperature. But there was no working oven, so I had to improvise. I looked around and found a bucket and cushion that looked like they could do the trick to insulate the yoghurt during the fermentation process.

Bucket next to cushion

Bucket in cushion

It was a sunny 32°C in Bekasi, so I decided to ferment the yoghurt outside. I added my op-shop Harry Potter scarf for good measure. The bucket-cushion-scarf combo didn’t quite work. It needed something to weigh it down, so I chose a nearby pot plant.

32 degrees in Bekasi

Bucket scarf yoghurt

Pot plant weigh down

Five to six hours later, I had smooth yoghurt (see videos below), but it wasn’t as solid as I liked. So I decided to bring it inside and let it ferment further overnight (there was still some residual warmth thanks to the hot day).

The next day, it still wasn’t as solid as I liked, but it was definitely an improvement. I served it with banana and peanuts, Mum liked it so the experiment was a success.

So not my finest batch, but considering it was made with improvised equipment away from home, it’s pretty good. Making your own yoghurt ticks the boxes: you know exactly what goes into it, without the thickeners/stabilisersetc., and you avoid yet another plastic tub heading for the recycling bin.It’s also fun to do. There is something quite satisfying about turning milk and a spoonful of yoghurt into breakfast for the next week.

Videos