Make Your Own Greek Yogurt

I remember one day when I was living downtown and at my local Greek restaurant when the owner asked me to go to the store to get her a container of Astro's Balkan Style Yogurt.  She was making a B-I-G pot of yogurt for their tzatziki. It was a two day process, one day to make the yogurt, the second to strain it for the tzatziki. That's when I realized that I had been doing this for a long time but I had known it under another name -  labneh or yogurt cheese.

 All you need to make Greek yogurt are a couple of things: a glass bowl, a strainer, a basket type coffee filter or cheese cloth (paper towel will do in a pinch but I find it leaves a funny taste behind) and a yogurt that preferably doesn't have any fillers or thickeners like gelatin (powdered milk is OK as is whey protein concentrate but be aware that these are technically thickeners) .

Bowl, strainer, cheese cloth and yogurt

 What you do is place the strainer, lined with the coffee filter or cheese cloth, over the bowl and put the yogurt into the strainer. Place all of this into the fridge overnight or a bit longer (the longer it drains the thicker it gets). In the morning all the excess whey will have drained into the bowl and in the strainer will be your thickened yogurt. You can then take your yogurt an put it into a covered container. And that's all there is to it. I like doing it this way because regular yogurt goes on sale all the time usually for about $1.99 for 750 g and for my little bit of effort I've saved myself some cash.

My own Greek yogurt

For this batch I'm thinking of adding some protein powder I have lying about to some of the yogurt to see what the taste is like and to up the protein content, the rest I'm leaving plain so I can make tzatziki (just adding garlic and shredded drained cucumber) and a curry marinade. As I'm writing this I'm wishing I had fresh figs for a desert - figs topped with yogurt with some lemon peel and a drizzle of honey or balsamic vinegar-yum.

Have you ever done this and how do you like to use yogurt?