How to make Instant Pot Coconut Yogurt (Paleo, Dairy-Free)

Hi, thanks for tuning in today. We're going to make coconut yogurt in our instant pot. Are you ready? Helps if you take the lid off. Gotta have everything in there. This is our most popular recipe. People ask the most questions about it as well, so we figured we would do a video to show you all how easy it is. So I have two cans of Arroyo de Coconut Milk. I have used in the past just the cream portion, leaving the runny liquid behind, but the last few times I've made this recipe I've used the entire can and had no issues. If you like really thick, really creamy coconut yogurt, just use the coconut cream. It helps to put the coconut cream in the fridge overnight. Then you can just pour off the liquid and put the solids in. You need approximately three cans of coconut cream or two full cans of coconut milk, and they're 400 milliliters each. So I have found that heating the coconut milk just to make sure that all of the solids, especially if you're using the coconut cream, are melted helps with the texture. Otherwise, I found it ends up a little bit gritty. Really easy to start it on our ultra. Press the start button, select yogurt, and then temperature to high, and start. You can also adjust your incubation time at this area. I picked eight hours. Eight hours seems to be the magic number for my personal preference. The longer you incubate it, the stronger it will taste. I use this whisk to make sure that it is well combined and whisked up, and wait for it to come to a boil. Alternately, if you want to use the saute function of your instant pot, that works as well. It doesn't have to be a full boil. Once this bad boy is boiling, you know that everything, all of the fats have melted together. All the coconut fat has melted together, and you'll have a nice texture. It's also essential to make sure you boil the milk if you're using dairy products. You can adjust the hours, how many hours you want, up or down. I prefer eight to 12, personally. At this point, I usually take the lining out of the instant pot. You can add the gelatin now or later. I will add the gelatin now today. You want to make sure the gelatin dissolves because, again, texturally clumps of gelatin are not ideal. You can use the gelatin now or at the end of the incubation, but you have to wait until the mixture cools to below 100 degrees Fahrenheit before you add the starter. If you don't, you will kill the starter, and then you won't get that sour flavor that you're looking for. Using live cultures, the heat kills them off, so it's really important. You can either pull the liner out and leave it on the counter. You can put it in an ice bath if you'd like, depending on how patient you are. You can just wait. I have this thermometer. It's a candy thermometer, and it's handy, so I know exactly how hot the mixture is and when it is safe to put in the yogurt starter. It's still too warm as it just boils in here, but you want it under 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It took approximately half an hour for it to cool down to below 100 degrees, which is fantastic, so I know that my starter, if I put it in now, won't die. Now, there are some issues. Sometimes you'll get starter that has not been refrigerated. It does happen. The process for the coconut yogurt is really simple, but it can feel quite involved, so you start with the heat to pasteurize the milk or to melt all of the solids in your coconut milk. That's for your texture. To kill any bacteria that may be lurking in there that you don't know about, less likely with coconut milk as it has antimicrobial properties, but with dairy products or if you're using a nut milk of some sort, I would suggest making sure that it's to a boil just to kill off any pathogens. Then, you can add the gelatin at that point when it's warm or you can wait until it's cooled. It's up to you, but the gelatin is needed when you're using milk alternatives because the live cultures don't have the same amount of sugars to eat and to thicken and give you that coconut or that yogurt-y texture. You'll find with a lot of commercial milk alternative yogurts, thickeners such as guar gum, xanthan gum, corn starch sometimes. I like the healing properties of gelatin myself. You can use whatever you're comfortable with. I have not ever used agar or other alternatives in this recipe, so I can't consult either way. I've seen some people with success and some people without, so I haven't yet had an opportunity to test it myself. So, heat it, cool it, add your live cultures. It has to be less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. If it is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it could and most likely will kill off your live cultures, making your coconut milk just basically slightly thicker coconut milk. You won't have that tang. You won't have that texture. So, it's really important you bring it down below 100 degrees Fahrenheit before you add your live cultures. At that point, whatever brand you choose to use and some people have had some successful probiotics as well. I like to add Just Thrive probiotics because they are resistant to the heat, but they're not going to give you alone the same tang as a starter or other probiotic cultures. So, the Just Thrive is an obligate anaerobe, which means that it doesn't activate with oxygen like other probiotics. It does not start to work until it is inside your body. So, you can add it to your yogurt and I would suggest that you do add it to your yogurt and your cultures because a lot of the probiotics that you will take by the time they reach your GI tract are not as effective. Obligate anaerobes, it means it activates inside your body instead of with oxygen. After it is cooled and you've added the live cultures, then you put that bad boy into incubate. You let the bacteria, those live cultures do their work, thicken up your product, give it that tang. So, there's a number of different ways to do it. You could turn on the light in your oven and incubate in there. You could put it in a sleeping bag, I've heard, which for me personally would be an enormous mess. Ah, a little accident prone. So, heat, cool, add the live cultures, and then incubate. Let the bacteria do its work. Make it lovely, a little bit thicker, and nice and tangy. And then you're good to go. So, once it comes down to temperature, you just sprinkle in the starter. I have no issues with dairy, so this has actually skim milk powder in it, this particular brand. There are other brands and links to other brands that are completely vegan that have no dairy in them. Oftentimes, though, they will have corn in them, so watch for that as well. But give it a good stir, make sure that it's all mixed up. And then you can put a glass top, or a plate, or this lid on it if you'd like, and hands off for eight hours. At this point, I like to pour it into jars, or the instant pot yogurt cups, so that it's a really easy grab and go. You just throw some fruit or some honey on there, and you're good to go. So, I think we might do that. So, I poured our mixture into the yogurt cups, pretty handy, just like so. You can put the lids on, or keep them off, it's really up to you. I'm going to keep them off, but they go just in there like so. Come to the yogurt function, and press start. And we'll see you in eight hours. Morning! We had a good night's sleep, and we're ready to have some delicious coconut milk yogurt. Are you ready? Because I haven't yet invested in a glass lid for my instant pot. I use this handy plate, just basically to help keep the heat in while it's incubating, and also keep debris out, or flies, or anything that may be floating around. So, we use the instant pot yogurt cup, and I like to give it just a little bit of a stir, just to make sure it's the texture that I want. If it wasn't quite thick enough, I could let it incubate a little bit longer, or I could add a touch more gelatin if I wanted, while it's still at this room temperature. But I know that once I refrigerate it, it will solidify a little bit as well, making it perfect yogurt consistency. And the great thing about these instant pot yogurt cups is they have lids, and you can stack them in the fridge just like so. You can add whatever toppings you'd like. You can add honey. You can add fruit. You can add cinnamon. You can use it in dips, sauces. You can go forth and use this dairy alternative yogurt in a number of different recipes. We have some on the site, or in recipes other than ones on our site, if you're cheating on us by looking at other recipe sites, which, it's fine. I get it. I get it. There's enough love to go around. The world is your yogurt. Make sure that you comment with any questions, and I will do my best to help you out. Have a great day. Let's do this. Do it. Okay.