Your Instant Pot Is The Best Kitchen Tool For Easier Homemade Yogurt

Americans absolutely love yogurt, supported by the fact that we consumed nearly 5 billion pounds in 2022 according to Statista. Many find it an easy and delicious way to consume more protein and guard gut health with probiotics. With these stats, it's no surprise that people are looking for ways to make this magical stuff at home — and for that, our no-fail recommendation is the Instant Pot.

Traditional yogurt-making methods include heating milk to a specific temperature, adding live probiotic cultures, and then keeping the mixture just warm enough for the yogurt to ferment. When making yogurt on the stovetop, this means constantly adjusting the temperature or placing your pot of yogurt in an insulated container and hoping it doesn't cool too much.

When using an Instant Pot to make yogurt, there's no need to babysit your mixture because you can set the Instant Pot to hold a specific temperature for long periods of time. This function helps ensure you get delicious results more consistently with less guesswork. In fact, so many people use Instant Pots for easy yogurt-making that there's even a "yogurt function" included in the controls of most devices. Instant Pots also radiate less heat than stovetops and produce less mess to clean up after your yogurt has set.

Eating more yogurt is a great way to pack more nutrition into your diet. It's not only rich in protein, calcium, and probiotics, but it also contains B vitamins and minerals like potassium and magnesium. Its creamy texture and tangy flavor also make it the perfect vehicle for seasonal fruit compotes, crushed graham crackers, and sliced almonds to create a dessert-like treat — and who doesn't want more dessert?

One of the biggest benefits of making Instant Pot yogurt at home is knowing exactly what's in it. You can choose the right amount of sweetener, what kind of milk to use as a base, and which yogurt to use as a starter. Any plain yogurt that contains live active cultures will work, meaning you can customize the flavor by choosing your favorite plain yogurt as a starter. You can even add vanilla extract to your base for homemade vanilla yogurt.

Other flavoring options include using honey or pure maple syrup as a sweetener in place of refined sugar and whipping it together with nut butter for a truly dense and delicious treat. Suggestions include almond butter with a dusting of cinnamon and chopped mango if you love tropical flavors, or cashew butter with a dollop of pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and crushed pecans for an autumnal snack.