This easy recipe turns milk into homemade yogurt in an Instant Pot and garnishes it with fresh blueberries and a blueberry sauce.

Social Learning

You have a lot of leeway in terms of how long you can run the Instant Pot’s yogurt function. Ten is usual. I’ve read about as many as twenty-four and as few as four. According to science, the longer the incubation period, the less lactose in the final yogurt, in case that’s a concern.

I’ve read that you can make yogurt in your Instant Pot only with ultra-pasteurized milk, and I’ve also read that you cannot do it with ultra-pasteurized milk. Clearly, you can do it with ultra-pasteurized milk; I’ve done it several times. Other people who seem like reliable sources, like a nationally-recognized homecooking guru, a doctor, and a microbiologist call for regular milk. So, eat that, internet! In any case, you have a lot of choices when it comes to types and brands of milk, and each of these choices will affect the taste and texture of your yogurt. I used Horizon organic ultrapasteurized whole milk.

I like the texture this homemade yogurt at various stages of straining. Unstrained, it’s more delicate that store-bought, both in taste and texture, and that delicacy is really and truly lovely. Strained about an hour, it’s more like a typical, store-bought yogurt. Strain it four-to-six hours and you’ll get a Greek-style that rivals anything you could buy: thick, creamy, luxurious, and delcious. You can continue straining it, and you’ll eventually get something similar to cream cheese.

The Starter

Once you’ve made some yogurt, you can use a half-cup of your homemade yogurt as the “starter” for the next batch, but I’ve read that you can do this only a few times. Apparently each time you use an old culture to create a new yogurt, the resultant culture is weaker. After a few iterations, you won’t have a strong enough culture to innoculate a new batch. I’ve also heard that the type and brand of yogurt you use as a starter will have an important effect on the taste and texture of your homemade yogurt. I used Fage plain Greek yogurt, and I loved the result.

The Blueberries

A single teaspoon of sugar isn’t much for the sauce. I went back and forth about it, and in the end, I decided that it’s perfectly enough. It takes the sauce just barely – almost unnoticeably – beyond the sweetness of the fruit. My expectation is set by the commercial fruited yogurts that I’ve had, which are decidedly sweet. Once I allow myself to step away from that expectation, something that’s more closely aligned with the inherent but sutble sweetness of the fruit and yogurt without (much) added sugar is actually quite interesting and refreshing. If you want it sweeter, it’s easy to stir more sugar into the finished sauce while it’s still hot.

Scheduling

In terms of timing, I like to start in on this recipe around 8 PM, so that I can get the finished yogurt into the fridge in the morning. There are lots of ideas about scheduling the processs. Follow the links in the fine print at the end of this post to find a few.

The Backstory:

The big question is, why would you make your own yogurt? Virtually everything you can do with this yogurt – texture, flavor, fat content, organic or not – you can probably find a store-bought yogurt offering the same thing and doing a seemingly good job of it. I did it mainly because I thought it’d be fun, and it was.

There are some possible cost savings. To DIY it, the milk cost me $5.79 and I paid $1.59 for the single Fage I needed for the culture. The blueberries cost me $4.50. That put me at $11.88 without counting incidentals like butter and sugar. To buy an equal amount of single-serving of Chobani blueberry, I’d have to buy 13 of them. At $1.50 per, that’s $19.50. So, my DIY yogurt costs about 40% less. I suppose that could add up if you ate yogurt all the time, and I go through phases where I do.

Note, though, that although straining the yogurt will give it a thicker texture, it will also reduce the amount of yogurt by half or more, depending on how long you allow it to strain. That might make it more of a break-even situation financially, or it might even make DIYing it more expensive than buying it.

Adult Lunchbox

Of course you should pack this into your lunch! Put the sauce and fresh berries on the bottom, just like Dannon does. (Because putting the sauce and berries on top and storing it that way turns out to be less pretty.)

Homemade Blueberry Yogurt in an Instant Pot

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man!, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you, Kesor. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. References: Martha, Simply Recipes, The Microbial Menagerie, William Hayes. Make It Like a Man! has been ranked by Feedspot as #14 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs!

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