Making yogurt, any success?

[AlternativeMoniker53]

DS and I have tried twice, wasted a lot of milk and totally failed to produce Greek (style) yogurt. Please could anybody share their recipe and method? We're using whole milk and Onken full-fat bio yogurt but it's just not thickening. Thank you

you need to strain it
make the yoghurt as normal
(I have used semi skimmed uht in the past, and stirred in a few spoonfuls of dried milk powder)
When the yoghurt is done, line a sieve with muslin if you have it or a tea towel if not, put the sieve over a bowl. Put all the yoghurt into the lined sieve and leave it - the longer you leave it the thicker the yoghurt will be. The liquid that comes out you can use for baking.

Strain it as above until you get the consistency you want. If you leave it a long time, you can make yoghurt cheese, and I do this with yoghurt I've stirred garlic, chopped herbs and a good pinch of salt into - better than Boursin for dunking veg sticks, grissini or crisps. The whey is FAB for breadmaking

I presume you're asking about the first stage? Straining the yogurt once set should be no problem?

Are you using uht milk? If not then you need to scald the milk first, the yogurt maker should have instructions. For your starter make sure you have one with live cultures. Not sure if onken does but yeo valley plain yogurt works for me every time I need a new starter. I have 'normal' yogurt maker and my recipe is this: 2ts live yogurt, mixed with 5ts dried milk powder (optional, I don't always do this) and 1l uht skimmed milk. 8hrs in the maker then it should have set and I put it in the fridge to set properly. reasons for failure have been: it was too cold in the room (I drape a tea towel over the top in winter now) or the starter has done too many batches. In both cases leaving it longer worked, the taste just was a bit more sour when it finally reached setting point. I have never yet binned a whole lot of yogurt/milk. And yes, when I can be bothered, straining works well with a muslin in a colander, and I too love using the whey for bread!