If you use sour cream regularly, I encourage you to make it at home. Store-bought brands and my homemade sour cream taste and look as starkly different as American cheese and aged extra sharp cheddar.
Homemade sour cream has such tangy flavor that I spoon less of it onto any dish. It slides as gently off of that spoon as soft-whipped cream, rather than holding a molded gelatin-like shape. Plus, you make it with just a few minutes of hands-on time.
Sour cream and Cultured Buttermilk both use a powdered mesophilic starter and similar techniques. But instead of culturing at room temperature, I pour the sour cream into a thermos to develop slowly, like Homemade Small-Batch Yogurt. If you make either dairy product, you’re well prepared for your first batch of sour cream.
Butterfat plays a big role in sour cream’s flavor and texture. I make the best sour cream, with a tangy taste and spoonable texture, from half-and-half with 16% butterfat. But I usually settle for less expensive half-and-half with 8% to 12% butterfat. Light whipping cream, which has around 20% butterfat, creates thicker but less tangy sour cream.
For a few months, I made sour cream with homogenized, ultrapasteurized half-and-half, hoping that the cream wouldn’t rise to the top in the fridge, but such high-temperature pasteurization created inconsistent batches. Now, if I want to lightly stabilize and thicken sour cream, I start by stirring in a little dry milk powder – or I just stir the finished sour cream before I use it.
Homemade Sour Cream
Makes 1 pint
2 cups cold half-and-half or light whipping cream
2 teaspoons dry milk powder (optional)
1/16 teaspoon powdered mesophilic starter
In a 2-cup glass measuring cup, whisk together the fridge-cold half-and-half and dry milk powder, if using, until thoroughly combined. Pour lukewarm water into a 3-quart or larger thick-bottomed saucepan until about two-thirds full. Set the measuring cup of half-and-half in it, ensuring the water level is well below the rim. On low heat, warm the pan’s contents until the cream is 86°F, which should take at least 15 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat.
Sprinkle the powdered starter over the half-and-half and wait five minutes for it to rehydrate. Use a fork to stir in the starter, making about 20 up-and-down strokes to distribute it evenly.
Pour the warm cultured half-and-half into a wide-mouth, 1-pint thermos and seal the lid. Let the mixture sit for about 12 hours, so that the half-and-half cools slowly and starts to sour, and then shake the thermos to ensure the culture develops evenly. Leave the sour cream in the thermos for up to 24 hours longer, until it is fully cultured and you like its sour taste.
Pour the finished sour cream into a clean lidded jar or container and place it in the fridge. The sour cream will thicken further and develop fuller flavor over the next couple of days. Store it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.
Julie Laing is a Bigfork-based cookbook author and food blogger at TwiceAsTasty.com.