Can I make yogurt using only reconstituted powdered milk?

October 6, 2018 3:55 PM

Looking for anyone with first-hand experience of doing this to tell me whether it'll work, and whether it'll taste good enough to actually eat.

I’m trying to cut down on single-use plastics consumption. I get through a lot of single-serve yoghurt pots, so I thought about getting a yogurt maker with nice glass pots instead, but then realised it wouldn’t help, as I’d still have to buy the milk in plastic bottles. (I live in a big new build block of flats where there’s no way I can get a doorstep milk delivery, which is the only way to get milk in glass bottles where I live).

Then it occurred to me to wonder if I could use powdered milk, made up. It’d be cheaper, easier to store and carry home from the shops, and would use way less plastic per pint.

Will it work?

Will it taste awful?

I've found one or two articles online that suggest it might be a go-er, but they alone are not quite enough to convince me to shell out on the yogurt maker (most search results just refer to adding a little powdered milk to yogurt made with the regular stuff, to thicken it, rather than using only the powdered stuff).

Does anyone have first hand experience?

I’m in the UK, FWIW, if anyone's recommending things to buy to assist in my quest.

posted by penguin pie to Food & Drink (23 answers total)

(Just to clarify: I know about using a starter, I don't literally mean using just powdered milk)
posted by penguin pie at 3:58 PM on October 6, 2018

I say try making a small batch with no yogurt maker, and see how it goes. You can incubate in an oven preheated to very low heat and then turned off, with the oven light bulb left on; or you can incubate in a thermos; or you can incubate in a container wrapped in towels with a heating pad. The only possible issue with powdered milk I can think of is that the process of making powdered milk might denature the milk protein in some way that would affect yogurt. But then, when you make yogurt with fresh milk, you heat it up first to denature the proteins to help it thicken. So powdered milk might work well.
posted by snowmentality at 4:14 PM on October 6, 2018

Thanks snowmentality - just to head off similar suggestions - I don't have a thermos, a heating pad, or a working oven light, unfortunately! Hoping to find someone who can say for sure if it works or not.
posted by penguin pie at 4:18 PM on October 6, 2018

Yes, I have done this. It tasted fine, but admittedly not quite as good as yogurt made with regular milk.
posted by 8603 at 4:25 PM on October 6, 2018

This will work, indeed you can buy premix "yoghurt" packs that contain dried milk and the culture. The taste is okay. It's not amazing in my experience but it's all right.
posted by smoke at 4:25 PM on October 6, 2018

For those in US who may be as befuddled as I was, by this question: apparently they are only now getting milk cartons in UK!?!?! link
posted by sheldman at 4:35 PM on October 6, 2018

sheldman: Nope, we've had cartons for many years, but the vast majority are not much better for the environment than plastic bottles - the cardboard is essentially coated in plastic. And they've waned a lot in availability, they used to be quite common but now are vastly outnumbered by plastic bottles. That one you linked to looks like an unusual exception in the recyclability stakes, but I've never seen it for sale anywhere, so it's not widespread.
posted by penguin pie at 4:43 PM on October 6, 2018

I’ve made yogurt from powdered milk. I thought it was pretty crappy (I was even living in West africa at the time and dairy was mostly unavailable and I thought it still sucked). However it’s a pretty low cost investment if you want to try it out (I also just made it in one bigcookpot rather than an official yogurt maker.)
posted by raccoon409 at 4:57 PM on October 6, 2018

If you don’t have a yogurt maker and it’s too cold in your hon you can also do a smaller cook pot with a larger cookout on the outside with the warm water in the big cookout. You may have to change it out a couple of times, but worth the small effort
posted by raccoon409 at 4:59 PM on October 6, 2018

We do half powdered and half whole milk and it works fine. Pure powdered milk yogurt feels a little weak sauce.
posted by larthegreat at 5:53 PM on October 6, 2018

I did when I didn’t have reliable access to fresh milk. I prefer making it from fresh milk but it worked. Here’s the recipe I used: https://theboatgalley.com/yogurt/
posted by vivzan at 6:03 PM on October 6, 2018

I do this, in New Zealand, and it's fine. I did buy a yogurt maker, but it's just an outer plastic container with an inner one inside it; you pour boiling water into the outer one and leave it overnight, much like raccoon409's suggestion above.

My method is to mix the powdered milk a little thicker than the package calls for, add a spoonful of existing yogurt, shake it all up really well, and put it in the yogurt maker.

I tend to go in yogurt phases, so sometimes my spoonful of existing yogurt is from the last batch I made and sometimes it's from plain live-culture yogurt from the store.

The first batch or two may be a little boring/thin, but then they get better.
posted by inexorably_forward at 8:17 PM on October 6, 2018

While living in a pretty remote research station that had only powdered milk for most of the year, our chefs managed to make fantastic yogurt. I'm not sure what they did exactly - there was some experimenting with initial powder concentrations and temperatures - but it was as good as any yogurt I've had.
posted by eotvos at 8:18 PM on October 6, 2018

I did this. The trick was making much thicker powdered milk, i think about 1.5-2x milk powder than required to increase the content of milk solids and letting it sit a while (yogurt i forgot i was making turned out thicker and nicer to me than yogurt in the correct timing). Use full fat powdered milk where the ingrediants are basically milk, dried.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:48 PM on October 6, 2018

Yes, my mum always used powdered milk as it made it significantly cheaper. Tasted totally fine to me.
posted by kitten magic at 9:27 PM on October 6, 2018

I bought some non-fat organic powdered milk recently out of convenience because I don't drink/keep fresh milk in the house. A number of reviews mentioned that they were using it for yogurt-making so it can definitely be done though I have no idea if it tastes good. I would suggest full cream milk if you're using it for yogurt-making though.

I bought full cream goat's milk powder before this and I much preferred that though it was more expensive.

Recipe using powdered goat's milk

posted by whitelotus at 11:56 PM on October 6, 2018

I've done this while staying in Egypt for a couple of weeks, where fresh yogurt is expensive and cheap hotel rooms are 30 degrees Celcius, a good temperature for yogurt making. I can confirm that it works fine. I also second the suggestion to make your milk thicker than normal, for best results.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:47 AM on October 7, 2018

I have made yogurt successfully by putting the yogurt mixture into a (quart) jar, and filling another quart jar with boiling water, then putting both jars into a small cooler overnight, with the lid closed and covered with a towel. No oven light etc. needed.
posted by leahwrenn at 8:29 AM on October 7, 2018

Yes, but use more powder than you would to make it into milk for drinking. It helps it taste creamier. If you're adding fruit puree or a strong flavorings of some sort once it's made even better or make yogurt dip or cook with it & you really can't tell it's just the texture isn't quite the same but not in a bad way, just different.
posted by wwax at 11:43 AM on October 7, 2018

I made yogurt with powdered milk for years when my kids were little, it tasted fine to them and me.
posted by mareli at 6:11 PM on October 7, 2018

when I used to use powdered milk instead of regular, I found it always tasted better if I made it one day and let it sit overnight, and I also added a teaspoon or so of salt to each half gallon I mixed up. That might help the eventual yogurt. And even when I make yogurt with regular milk, I'll usually add a half cup or so of dry milk powder to the mix to help thicken it up.
posted by lemniskate at 6:12 PM on October 7, 2018

Yes, I've done this lots and it was fine. I have only tried skimmed milk powder. If you can find whole milk powder instead I think it would be better. I am not a fan of any non-fat yogurt, so if you're into that then maybe using just skimmed milk powder would be fine.

When I make yogurt with liquid milk, I always add about half or three quarters of a cup of powdered milk to 2 litres of liquid milk. Similarly when I use just dry milk, I increase the amount to make it thicker.

Incidentally, try maintaining your heated milk at 180-185F for 15 or 20 minutes before letting it cool. It makes the yogurt much thicker. I recently discovered this after decades of yogurt making and it's been a real game-changer.
posted by Frenchy67 at 1:39 PM on October 8, 2018

This is an old hiker trick and it works fine.

Do small test batches until you get calibrated on the milk concentration, inoculation amount, and incubation conditions, and then scale up slowly. Even in a powered yogurt maker, square cube law matters.

If you reuse the same culture, or inoculate the next batch from the previous, note that cultures can go bad and need to be replaced periodically.

Good luck! Yogurt culturing is a lot of fun.

And if you have hipsters in the UK, soon you will be able to tell them that you made ravioli from flour and water and eggs and ricotta, which you curdled from whey, whichyou strained out of yogurt, which you cultured from milk.

Although I'm a little skeptical that going from gallon jugs of milk to, say, #10 cans of powdered milk is really the most effective way you can help the environment or even the most effective way you can reduce your use of single use plastics.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 8:03 PM on October 9, 2018