I can sum up the reason I have a milk cow in one word:
CREAM.
Ok, so there are more reasons than that, I suppose. But cream has a lot to do with it. Fresh cream sitting on the top of a gallon of raw milk is a beautiful thing, my friends.
And there’s so much stuff you can do with it. Homemade butter, homemade cream cheese, whipped cream frosting, swirling it into your coffee. Good grief, how could someone NOT love cream?
If you use as much sour cream as we do (I put it on pretty much everything…), you’ll be happy to know it’s pretty darn easy to make. It’s very similar to learning how to make buttermilk, but you use cream instead of milk, and a slightly different starter culture. Here’s how to make sour cream at home:
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How to Make Sour Cream
- 4 cups heavy cream
- One of the following starter cultures:
- 1 packet direct-set sour cream culture (where to buy)
- OR 1/8th teaspoon mesophilic starter culture (where to buy)
- OR 1 cup sour cream with live, active cultures*
*If using 1 cup of sour cream as your starter, reduce the amount of heavy cream to 3 cups.
Gently heat the cream to 86 degrees Farenheit. Stir the starter culture into the warm cream.
Cover it loosely with a towel and rubber band, and allow it to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours, or until it is thickened and tangy.
If you like, you can now turn your sour cream into cultured butter, or just drizzle it (or plop it–depending on the consistency) on your favorite dishes.
You can use your homemade sour cream as a starter to make future batches as well. However, after a while, it seems to “wear out” and you’ll want to begin with a fresh starter.
Homemade Sour Cream Notes:
- I use our raw cream, but pasteurized cream will work too–just avoid UHT cream if you can.
- If you are using raw cream, your end result might be a bit less thick than the sour cream from the store. But it’s still delicious and definitely usable.
- If you have access to raw cream, making sour cream can be as easy as letting raw cream sit out on the counter and sour. (Keep in mind this doesn’t work with pasteurized cream, though. If you leave pasteurized cream out, it just gets gross, since all the beneficial bacteria is gone.)
- However, I prefer the flavor of sour cream that has been inoculated with a bit of starter culture. It allows me to have more control over the flavor.
- Wondering how the heck to separate the cream from your fresh milk. I’ll show ya how here.
How to Make Sour Cream
- Category: Home Dairy
Ingredients
- 4 cups heavy cream
- One of the following starter cultures:
- 1 packet direct-set sour cream culture (like this)
- OR 1/8th teaspoon mesophilic starter culture (like this)
- OR 1 cup sour cream with live, active cultures*
- *If using 1 cup of sour cream as your starter, reduce the amount of heavy cream to 3 cups.
Instructions
- Gently heat the cream to 86 degrees Farenheit. Stir the starter culture into the warm cream.
- Cover it loosely with a towel and rubber band, and allow it to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours, or until it is thickened and tangy.
- If you like, you can now turn your sour cream into cultured butter, or just drizzle it (or plop it–depending on the consistency) on your favorite dishes.
Will this work with goat cream?
I was wondering the same thing. We are trying to decide on having a milk cow or goats, and we use a LOT of sour cream.
Milk from a goat is very hard to separate from the cream because they don’t naturally separate just by sitting out as in cow milk. I had a hard time getting any cream from my goats but the cheese and butter still turned out excellent! Stuff that required just the cream… not so much.
I have Nubian Goats and the cream separates to the top after 1 to 2 days in the fridge. I skim off the cream. Some other breeds of goats do not produce much cream.
sure!
Hi Jill, I hardly ever use dairy and I make my own milk (cashew, almond, cocinut), is it possible to make cream cheese, sour cream etc. out of the thick substance that is often left in the bottom of the jars, especially the cashew milk?
*coconut 🙂
Hi Carnette,
Unfortunately, I have zero experience with non-dairy milks, so I’m afraid I can’t be much help there. Sorry!
Thank you Ma’am will try it out. Have a great weekend.
Hi Jill! Thanks for the recipe. I have two questions:
1. after heating it and adding the culture, what type of container do you let it sit in? And also do you heat it using direct flame in a pot?
2. Will the recipe still work if you cut it in half? And use say 2 cups of raw cream instead of 4? Thanks!
Hi! I make Bulgarian yogurt and was wondering if that can be used as a starter for sour cream?
Thank you!
Can sour cream be made in an instapot?
Yes with yogurt. Look it up and it will tell you how to ferment for 24 hrs. It’s on Pinterest.
Can plain yogurt be used instead of sour cream for culturing it?
This is brilliant, sometimes I get stuck without sour cream so I love that you can make your own!
All I find in the supermarket is pasteurized sour cream so I’m assuming there are no live cultures.
Where can I find sour cream with live culture?
Hi Jill!!
How long will this last in the fridge since it’s cultured? A long time?
Thank you!!!
I would like to make sour cream at home but don’t know how.