Anyone make their own non-dairy yogurt?

[my2boysteacher]

Using almond, hemp or coconut milk?

Any good recipes?

Do you use a starter or 'regular' dairy yogurt to start?

[Rosie_0801]

I've only made it once, with home made cashew milk and dates for sweetening. I used a commercial starter. It tasted alright, a bit runny, but I could have fixed that had I tried again, I expect.

[dbmamaz]

i have cultured canned coconut milk to sub for yogurt in a soup, but i havent eaten it like yogurt. it was a little runny. i've heard people thicken it if they do it regularly. i used some powdered acidopholous i'd bought by accident and had been sprinkling on my cereal in the morning.

[Soror]

I tried it a few times w/ purchased safe starter and coconut milk but I could never get the taste and consistency right. The kids however, are on regular yogurt now so it isn't that big of a deal.

[shukriyya]

I've made coconut milk kefir using kefir grains. It's delicious with the consistency of sour cream and can be subbed in for that but it wasn't runny like the regular dairy kefir I made.

[Orthodox6]

A search engine will pull up a lot of hits for "how to". Here are two links that I randomly grabbed. I have not tried to make any kind of yogurt, though.

 

http://www.thegfcflady.com/2010/04/17/homemade-coconut-yogurt/

 

http://bonzaiaphrodite.com/2010/08/homemade-vegan-yogurt-in-the-crock-pot/

[Staceyshoe]

I've made coconut milk kefir using kefir grains. It's delicious with the consistency of sour cream and can be subbed in for that but it wasn't runny like the regular dairy kefir I made.

 

I'm glad this worked for you. I used to make kefir with cow's milk, but my kefir grains are long gone. Now I have a child with a severe dairy allergy who has had an anaphylactic reaction to a teeny-tiny dairy exposure. He typically uses coconut milk as his "dairy." Do you happen to know if/where I could get milk kefir grains that have never touched animal milk (cow, goat, etc all have the same allergen triggers for him)? I'd love to give this a try, but I'm very cautious given the severity of his allergy.

[celticmom]

^:lurk5: I have wondered about making nondairy yogurt and cheese myself.

[skimomma]

I used to do it all the time with homemade almond milk. It was quite good. I used a store-bought soy yogurt (the only non-dairy option available to me at that time) for the first batch then just used a little from the previous batch for all the future batches. It was a little runnier than commercial non-dairy yogurt, but was still a hit in my family. I have since switched to dairy yogurt as we now have a source of local, clean, dairy. I have learned a few more tricks that probably would have firmed up the almond yogurt. I make my yogurt in quart-sized mason jars and I use a small picnic cooler to incubate (this is how I made the old yogurt too). But now I "flash-sterilize" the jars and lids first by pouring boiling water over them. The theory being that you are taking down some of the "bacterial competition" in the yogurt. It really does the trick. I use no thickeners, just milk and a little yogurt from the last batch and I can turn the jars upside down and the yogurt stays. So, I would try that. I also learned that my ancient single-cups yogurt maker is not as effective as my cooler for temp. I think my yogurt maker was running a little high in temp. The switch to cooler in the almond yogurt days did a lot to thicken my batches.

[Soror]

 

I'm glad this worked for you. I used to make kefir with cow's milk, but my kefir grains are long gone. Now I have a child with a severe dairy allergy who has had an anaphylactic reaction to a teeny-tiny dairy exposure. He typically uses coconut milk as his "dairy." Do you happen to know if/where I could get milk kefir grains that have never touched animal milk (cow, goat, etc all have the same allergen triggers for him)? I'd love to give this a try, but I'm very cautious given the severity of his allergy.

http://www.culturesforhealth.com/

 

You could try water keifir, I've had better luck with that or Kombucha than non-dairy yogurt. I've used the above site some, they have all kinds of starters for different things, dairy free and not. The dairy free starter I had was from http://www.giprohealth.com/ though.

[wendyroo]

My son can't have dairy or soy so I tried making non-dairy yogurt from almond and/or coconut milk (from a carton and a can) and either coconut yogurt for starter or a commercial non-dairy yogurt starter. I tried in the crockpot, in mason jars in a cooler and in mason jars in a temp controlled oven. I sterilized the jars, was very careful about starting with the right amount of sweetener and maintained the temp right where it was supposed to be. In all I tried about 8ish batches and NONE of them worked at all. Occasionally they would end up the slightest bit tangy, but they never thickened AT ALL - they always ended up just being liquid like they started.

 

I gave up.

[shukriyya]

 

I'm glad this worked for you. I used to make kefir with cow's milk, but my kefir grains are long gone. Now I have a child with a severe dairy allergy who has had an anaphylactic reaction to a teeny-tiny dairy exposure. He typically uses coconut milk as his "dairy." Do you happen to know if/where I could get milk kefir grains that have never touched animal milk (cow, goat, etc all have the same allergen triggers for him)? I'd love to give this a try, but I'm very cautious given the severity of his allergy.

 

 

Soror has some good links for water kefir grains. If you google them you'll find sites that sell guaranteed non-dairy kefir grains. The other option is to get milk kefir grains and make a dozen batches of juice kefir to remove the dairy from the grains.

[gracesteacher]

we use coconut milk (from the can) and agar agar to thicken it.

we got our recipe from Lexie's Kitchen blog.