There’s something incredibly satisfying about making your own yogurt from scratch—and it’s surprisingly easy! I was chatting with my dear friend Maureen recently, and she shared that she’s been making soy yogurt weekly. Years ago, before I was whole food plant exclusive, I had a yogurt maker and made my own yogurt weekly, but life got busy and I stopped making it. Early on, when I got my first Instant Pot, I made a couple batches of soy yogurt, but I was trying to lose weight and felt like the soy yogurt was too high fat for me. After talking to Maureen I just had to try the Instant Pot method again and I’m so glad I did. The results were fabulous—creamy, tangy, and wholesome.
The very next day, the grandkids were visiting, and they couldn’t wait to try my yogurt. We sweetened it with a little maple syrup and topped it with fresh berries. They loved it so much, they came back for seconds. The following day? They asked if they could have yogurt and fruit again! That truly warmed my heart.
I like to use the 16 ounce wide mouth canning jars for yogurt. They are also the perfect size for salad dressings, salsa, vegan cheese sauce and for dry goods in the pantry. Sometimes I use 8 ounce canning jars to make individual servings of yogurt. Choose the size that works best for you.
Glass jars with lids are perfect for storing our batch prepped food in the pantry or the refrigerator. Use for making yogurt, over night oats, chia pudding, sald dressings, dips, salsa and so much more.
This size is perfect for individual servings of yogurt, pudding, trail mix, hummus and so much more. Use for vegan nice cream toppings like chocolate chips, nuts, coconut and cacao nibs.
Why Make Your Own Soy Yogurt?
Making your own soy yogurt is not only cost-effective, but it also puts you in control of the ingredients. Store-bought plant-based yogurts can be pricey and often contain added sugars, thickeners, or preservatives. With homemade yogurt, you get pure, simple nourishment.
This recipe uses just two ingredients:
- Unsweetened organic soy milk (made only from soybeans and water)
- Probiotics (I use NOW Probiotic-10, 25 Billion CFU, which contains 10 probiotic strains for healthy intestinal flora) Once you have some home made yogurt save 4 tablespoons to use as your starter for your next batch.
Maureen recommended this brand of probiotic and it is good for healthy intestinal flora.
Maureen recommended this probiotic and it works beautifully! Just empty the contents of the capsules into the soy milk, (discard the capsules) in your blender container and blend it, pour into sterilized glass jars, and let your Instant Pot do the rest, using the Yogurt setting. No water is needed in the Instant pot. Put the lid on and set to venting.
Note: my daughter has had good luck just adding the probiotic powder into the carton of soy milk, put the lid back on and give it a good shaking to incorprate the probiotic and then – no blender to wash!
However if you are using the NOW probiotic it has a lilttle color to it and if you do the method where you add the powder to the carton of milk and shake it, you will see that it does not completely dissolve with just shaking. The finished product will have little bits of pinkish -orange spots on the top of the finished yogurt. That is the little clumps of probiotic that didn’t disslove from just shaking the carton. If using a white colored probitoic the little clumps that don’t dissolve are less visible. It still cultures and works so it’s up to you!
Make overnight oats using yogurt layered with uncooked rolled oats, fruit, nuts, a dash of ground cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg. Refrigerate over night and you will wake up to a delicious breakfast ready to eat! You can add a little ground vanilla bean or vanilla extract. If you prefer a sweeter yogurt add a little date syrup or maple syrup.
Watch this short video to see how simple and easy it is to make home made soy yogurt.
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