Homemade soy yogurt recipe

Nutritional information is included at the bottom of this recipe.

Did you know that many yogurts out on the market are just as bad for you as a Twinkie? Not only is dairy being revealed as linked to numerous health issues, but the sugar content in many store bought yogurts is mind blowing.

You might think a Twinkie is tooth-ache sweet with 19 grams of sugar. Well many of the popular brands of yogurt have up to 29 grams of sugar per serving! With the American Heart Association recommending no more than 30 grams of sugar per day for women, we might be better off with the Twinkie! Although we are not recommending that either.

The options out in the world for plain, unsweetened soy yogurt are slim. And if you can find it, it’s usually pretty expensive. Luckily it’s easy to make at home.

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I’ve been making my own soy yogurt for years and someone recently asked us to post our homemade soy yogurt recipe. So here it is!

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-ingredients

Soy yogurt recipe

All you need is:

  • 4 cups plain, unsweetened soy milk
  • 1 heaping tablespoon of soy yogurt for starter (sweetened is fine, just be sure it has live active cultures) lovelowfat-lsoy-yogurt-live-active-cultures
  • yogurt maker (or anything that will keep the yogurt at a steady temp of between 110-115 degrees F such as a heating pad or blanket, or a digital crockpot. I find a yogurt maker to be the easiest method, and you can find them pretty inexpensively)
  • optional: fruit and/or sweetener of choice

1. At medium temperature, heat the soy milk in a 2 quart sauce pan until it comes to a boil. Keep an eye on it! It expands a lot as soon as it reaches its boiling point, and can boil over pretty quickly.

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-pan-boiling-milk

2. Remove from heat and let cool to about 110 degrees. Meanwhile, preheat yogurt maker by turning it on.

As it’s cooling, you might see a skin form at the top of the milk. I find that removing it helps it to cool a little more quickly, plus I prefer it not to get mixed in to the recipe. It’s easy to remove with a spoon.

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-pan-boiling-milk-SKIN

3. Once cooled to the proper temp, pour into your yogurt making container or bowl.

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4. Gently stir in yogurt starter, cover and let sit in your yogurt maker for anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, depending on how tart you prefer it. The longer it sits, the more tart your soy yogurt recipe will be.

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-maker

5. Let chill for a few hours and it’s ready to use! The texture should be creamy and somewhat firm, as yogurt is. The recipe makes about a quart of soy yogurt.

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-done

What not to do

There are a number of reasons that could cause your homemade soy yogurt not to firm up:

  • milk other than unsweetened plain soy milk was used
  • milk did not boil all the way or was somehow contaminated in cooling process
  • soy milk was not at the proper temp when starter was added
  • yogurt starter did not have active cultures
  • setting temperature was too cool
  • yogurt was not let to set long enough

But it’s very simple to avoid these pitfalls as long as you follow the recipe as directed. And once you make your own homemade soy yogurt, you may find yourself never buying overly sweetened, overpriced mass produced yogurt again!

The next generation

Before you eat it all up, however, save a heaping tablespoon for your next batch of homemade soy yogurt so you don’t have to buy another starter. With that, you can keep it going infinitely as long as you continue to regularly make yogurt.

I remember visiting my grandmother’s very sweet neighbor Victoria who was in her nineties. I would go over to her house with my grandmother, they would sit outside on folding lawn chairs and talk while I looked for four leaf clovers in her yard.

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-clovers

One day, before I had given up all animal products, she had given me some of her homemade yogurt. I’m sure she didn’t have a yogurt maker. I’m guessing she had a gas stove where the pilot light kept the oven in the right temperature range.

That day she told me she had been continuing her yogurt from the same strain for over fifty years!!! That was dairy yogurt, but the same can be done with soy.

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I find the longer I have the same culture going, the better the yogurt comes out. I had one going myself for several years. I started it from my favorite soy yogurt that I brought back to the states from Europe. But then finally one time I waited too long to make a new batch and had to start over from scratch.

It’s your jam

There are endless dishes with which you can use this soy yogurt recipe. My favorite way to enjoy it is to mix it with some lightly sweetened jam or homemade compote.

lovelowfat-soy-yogurt-with-jam

Here’s the nutritional information for the recipe. Note that all values are PER 6 oz. SERVING, calculated assuming the recipe makes around 5 servings. Note that the totals are just for the soy yogurt recipe itself, they do NOT include any added fruit. Enjoy!

IngredientCaloriesCalories from fatFatSodiumCarbsSugarsProtein
TOTAL PER SERVING75333.7g79mg3.7gless than 1g6.5g
Soy milk64283.2g68mg3.2gless than 0.8g5.6g
Starter1150.5g11mg0.5gless than 0.2g0.9g

10 thoughts on “Homemade soy yogurt recipe

  1. Pingback: Homemade unsweetened soy yogurt | Fatfree Vegan Recipes

  2. Great recipe! At first I was a little disappointed that you had to buy store bought yoghurt at first, but it’s so worth it since it’s so much cheaper in the long run. I’m making it right now and I just checked the consistency (so cream and thick!), but the flavor is not quite there yet. Thanks for the recipe, will definately keep making my own vegan yoghurt from now on!

    • Thanks for the nice comment, Maria! I’m glad to hear it is thickening! I think you will find that the longer you let it set, the more the yogurt flavor will develop. And yes, I use store bought yogurt as a starter, but then after that you can use your own homemade yogurt as the starter. I have seen a vegan yogurt starter in a dry package before, but I’ve never tried it. Since my method is tried and true, and since buying a single cup of vegan yogurt as a starter isn’t very costly, I’ve just stuck with that. Let us know if you ever end up trying a dry vegan yogurt starter. Happy yogurt making!

  3. It is not common here in my place the plain soy yogurt. The common yogurt that can be found in the market is only those dairy, flavored yogurt. Can I still use those yogurt as starter for my soy yogurt? Thank you so much!

    • We have never tried using dairy yogurt as a starter for our soy yogurt. There are plant based yogurt starter packets you can buy online here, but we haven’t tried them ourselves. They do get great reviews, however. Hope that’s helpful!

    • We’ve never tried the recipe with UHT. Perhaps you could make a small batch to test it, we’d love to hear your results if you do!

      • Yes I have made some its not as thick as it should be but tastes lovely, this is probably due to it being UHT

  4. I was really cross when Woolies dropped the unsweetened Greek soy yoghurt I was buying, from their shelves. The alternative had water as the first ingredient and sugar as the second!
    Years ago I had made soy yogurt successfully but couldn’t seem to now. I decided to see what recipes were out there and this recipe worked really well. I did strain it a bit to make it thicker but I’m so happy with it. So thanks woolies. I can now make it for a fraction of the price whenever I want. And thanks for sharing your expertise!

    • Hi Philippa,

      I’m so glad you found the recipe to be helpful! Thanks so much for the nice comment. Yeah, it’s shocking how much sugar is added to commercial brands of all types of flavored yogurt. And it’s unfortunate, and criminal really, that it is misleadingly marketed as health food when it often has as much sugar as candy and soda. It’s so important to be vigilant about reading nutrition labels, or just prepare our food from scratch! 🙂

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