Thick, tasty sour cream

[MrsKK]

For those who have access to raw milk.  See the instructions for making clabber here:  http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1927.0.html

I've been using clabber to culture my cream cheese and finally had a batch turn out to be just what I wanted, flavor-wise, so I froze a quarter cup of it to use as culture for a future batch.

Wanting to make clabber-cultured cheese, but not having any clabber (too cold in the house for it to get going on it's own), I used that cream cheese culture to clabber a quart of milk. I kept the milk on top of the fridge to keep it warm enough to clabber within 3-4 days. I used half of the clabber to culture 5 gallons of milk and froze the other half in an ice cube tray for future culture.

I used whole milk for my cheese, which is a fake parmesan that I make by holding the cultured milk at about 70 degrees until it comes to a clean break, then cooking the curd. Long story short, I tasted the cream that had risen to the top by the next morning and found that it had a wonderful sour cream flavor. I skimmed it off, but it was thinner than I wanted, so I put the container on top of the fridge with a cloth over it. In two more days it was a bit thicker than pancake batter, so I put it into containers. I froze some of it and have kept some out for fresh use.

This is incredibly thick, almost like the spreadable cream cheese from the store, yet very smooth and rich. It tastes somewhere between sour cream, butter, and cream cheese, with the best qualities of all three.

I plan on trying to duplicate the results using some of the frozen culture with cream only.

[Tea]

Congrats Mrs K.  I prefer to make my own cream cheese too, but with summer here, I will have to wait until it is cooler.  Marking this post to come back too later.

[DeejayDebi]

Congrats Karen good job.

[MrsKK]

I mixed some dehydrated onion and pepper into some of this sour cream to take with me to work for a baked potato the other night.  After melding for about 5 hours, the flavor was wonderful.  It could be a stand-alone dip.

Made the potato awfully yummy and I didn't even miss not having butter with it.

[DeejayDebi]

I'll bet it was! I will have to try this next time I make sour cream. How many generations of clabber did it take to get to this level?

[MrsKK]

I usually use fourth generation skimmed milk clabber for culturing cheeses...anything less than that gets fed to the pigs and chickens because it still tastes kind of "off" for human consumption.

So this would have been 4 skimmed milk, one cream cheese generation.  I froze up six ice cubes of this batch of sour cream as culture for future batches.

[mtncheesemaker]

Hi Karen;
I made some sour cream the other day from a quart of cream I had skimmed off some milk. (I use raw milk, not my own cows.) I added Flora Danica, as it was the only "aroma" type starter that I had.
After 36 hours it was thickened but not thick like the commercial stuff.
So, would you make regular sour cream also from your clabber starter? I'm a little confused about the process if just starting with cream, not skimming it off the cheese making.
Thanks,
Pam

[MrsKK]

Yes, I am now also making it from skimmed cream (other than from cheese making).  It's still sitting out to thicken, so I will let you know how it works out.