We get through an awful lot of fat-free greek yogurt in our house - I can scarf my way through a kilo of the stuff all by myself with fruit for breakfast and it is so useful in cooking too.
We prefer the thicker Total version but it is expensive, so when I spotted a recipe for 0% Greek Yogurt using a slow cooker, rather than the usual wide-mouth flask (which I don't have) or a yogurt-maker (which I don't really want to buy as I have no room in the Little White Devon Cottage's Tiny Kitchen), I decided to try it out,using a small pot of 0% Total Greek Yogurt as the starter.
Starting with two litres of skimmed milk, I poured this into the slow cooker, switched it on to the High setting, put the lid on and waited for the temperature of the milk to reach 180o F. Once the milk was at temperature (this took about two hours), I switched off the slow cooker and allowed the milk to reach 110o F. This is important, as the live bacteria in the starter will be killed around 120o F.
The cooling took a little over two and a half hours and at this point, I made sure that the yogurt that I was using as a starter was out of the fridge, so that it would be at room temperature to add to the cooled milk.
When the milk had cooled sufficiently, I added 120g of 0% Greek Yogurt to the milk and whisked it in. Then I took the ceramic slow cooker pot out and swaddled it in towels, to be left like this overnight.
This morning, the yogurt had set, with whey floating on the top, so I decided to strain it - this is messy and takes FOREVER. I scalded some butter muslin, lined my sieve with it and left a 500g pot-full of yogurt dripping through while I got on with other things. Eventually, the drips of whey stopped, so I transferred the yogurt back into a clean pot and started on the next batch. By the time that I have finished, I should have a reasonable quantity of yogurt - it may not be as thick as the greek original, but I'm quite proud of my efforts.
