If you buy Yogurt, consider making your own. You can do it simply and quickly. If you use a microwave to warm the milk, your favorite pre-school child could do it.
Ingredients
"Seed Yogurt". Always buy yogurt with live cultures. It's better for you anyway. Yogurt will grow from old yogurt. Plain yogurt of your favorite brand. Sugar free and unflavored.
Sugar. Common table sugar. About a tablespoon per quart will do nicely.
Milk. I typically get 2% but I have done this from powdered milk and from whole milk. Your choice.
Instructions
Keep in mind, this could always fail and your container could end up being a container of spoiled milk. Check it every 12 hours or so. It should smell like yogurt, not like the dumpster behind the dairy.
Find yourself a very clean jar to make this in. I use a quart mason jar but you can use anything else that is appropriately sized. It should have a lid and fit in the microwave. I have a gallon of the stuff brewing in my kitchen right now.
Put that jar in the microwave and warm the milk to 90-100F or 35-39C.
Add a tablespoon of common sugar per quart.
Check the temperature of the milk to make sure it really is in that temperature band. Too hot or too cold and you will kill the seed yogurt.
Add 2 ounces, 56g of yogurt to the quart jar.
Stir vigorously and cover the jar.
Allow the yogurt to brew for about 48 hours. This should be done in a warm room or any appropriately warm place like in the oven with the light on. My kitchen was 76F/26C.
After 48 hours, check your yogurt. It should have jelled and taste tart.
Refrigerate and eat promptly as you would any other plain yogurt. I have 4 ounces of plain yogurt with an ounce of (mango) jelly, a half teaspoon of lime juice, and a packet of sweetener (saccharine).
Semi-Comedic Back Story. Once upon a time, I worked with Sue. She should have been named "Karen" because she sat across from me and complained about everything. I mean constantly. One day I brought in for lunch some yogurt I had found at an ethnic grocery. Mango, since I truly enjoy them and am looking forward to Mango Lassi Season.
Sue saw that and made the comment "You do know you could make it yourself, don't you?".
Despite her being a bit snide about the way she said it, she was right. I basically used the process she described and have been doing so the majority of my life.
Sue may have been a Karen, but she was right about the Yogurt.
Oh and if you really want flavor and your on-hand jelly isn't your favorite, I put some Tang in it today and ended up with a Creamsicle. Helps to have (big) kids around sometimes.
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