The Easiest Way To Add Probiotics To Your Homemade Yogurt

Making yogurt at home comes with various pros and cons. While making yogurt is a shockingly simple process -– typically including milk and either premade yogurt or yogurt starter culture -– it also misses out on additional health benefits that come with many store-bought yogurt brands. The most notable of these benefits comes from probiotics.

Probiotics, which help improve and balance your gut health, are naturally found in yogurt, and the dairy product is often marketed as the optimal source for probiotics. However, depending on the process you use to make the yogurt and what starter you use, you might not get the optimal amount of probiotics from your favorite type of dairy. Plus, because many commercial brands add more probiotics into their yogurt, your homemade yogurt cannot naturally compete with what some store-bought yogurts provide.

So, if you're making homemade yogurt, how do you add probiotics to your masterpiece to avoid missing out on the healthy bacteria? Well, the answer is more simple than you might think. You can add the contents of over-the-counter probiotic supplements to your concoction to make up for what you might've lost by making yogurt at home.

Ultimately, there are two instances in which using probiotic supplements in your homemade yogurt is optimal. For starters, some homemade yogurt makers have experimented with putting probiotic supplements, either from tablets or capsules, into their mixture in place of yogurt or yogurt starter ahead of fermentation. While this can warrant different results depending on how you are making the yogurt, this will ensure that the probiotics you want in your yogurt will be present. However, because this option is more experimental and, according to some, unnecessary, the alternative strategy is more common and straightforward.

The second option is to add your probiotic supplements after the yogurt is completely finished. You would do this by breaking open a probiotic capsule and mixing its contents into the finished product, adding more probiotics to the already-fermented yogurt. This way, it doesn't interfere with the natural probiotics that are in your homemade yogurt but still assures you are getting enough probiotics –- and a similar amount to what store brands can provide –- at the end of the day.