When it is finished my wife takes the extra step of straining and draining (with cheese cloth or a towel in a cullender or something similar) it to basically make it into Greek yogurt. She likes it extra thick.

But this extra step is not necessary at all to enjoy home made yogurt.

Her final step involves dividing up the batch into individual serving jars. She uses half pint wide mouth canning jars and she buys the plastic lids that fit them. By filling the jars 2/3 full with yogurt, putting a plastic screw on lid on them, and putting them in the refrigerator they are all ready to go as individual servings. They will last a week or two in the fridge (or probably longer).

When she gets ready to serve them she adds some chopped up nuts, a few blueberries (or chopped strawberries) and some shaved 85% dark chocolate (and sometimes cinnimin sprinkled on top) and they are ready to serve right in the jar. No need to spoon into individual dishes. We just eat it out of the jar. Obviously don't have to do it that way, but it keeps portion size consistent and she finds it an easy and quick way to prepare desert after supper is over. Just grab a jar and add the toppings. She usually chops up Brazil nuts as three of them gives our daily selenium requirement, but pecans or some other low carb nut is delicious also and gives a nice crunch mouth feel to the yogurt. It takes her a little time to fine chop the nuts up on a cutting board but she likes to do it and really makes the desert taste nice. Berries are the lowest sugar content fruit so it makes a very overall low carb desert prepared the way she does.

When we get down to the last few jars in the fridge she starts another batch in the Instant Pot. She just uses one of the jars or a partial jar of the yogurt previously made as the starter for the new batch.

Originally she made some yogurt directly in the jars setting inside the instant pot. That works ok if a person is not going to strain the extra whey off. The problem with it is we eat the stuff about every night and the batches were just too small that way. Could only do a few jars at a time in the Instant Pot where if you just dump the ingredients directly in the pot you can make a lot larger batch.

We tried putting the fruit in ahead of time, both as the yogurt was being made and also when storing in the refrigerator. But we found we like to add the fresh fruit right before eating the best. You get a nice crunch from it being fresh and just a nice little sweet pop from it when you bite into it along with the tart yogurt.

John