Recipe: Homemade Sour Cream - Recipes for Omar

How to make buttermilk out of regular milk?

3/4 cup (175 ml) regular milk
2 tsp (10 ml). vinegar or lemon juice

Add 2 tsp (10 ml). vinegar or lemon juice to regular milk, let stand one hour to sour, use instead of buttermilk.
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Sour Cream
(rich and creamy).

You can make sour cream or a cream cheese, depending upon your preference.

1 pint of table cream
1/4 cup of buttermilk

Scald out a glass bowl large enough to hold those two ingredients. Allow the bowl to return to room temperature. Pour in the pint of table cream into the bowl; then stir in the 1/4 cup of buttermilk. Cover the top of the bowl with cling wrap; then place the bowl in a warm place, around 80 degrees F.

I use the inside of a gas oven where the pilot light retains a nice even warmth. Let this mixture sit for approximately 24 hours. After time has passed, you will have the makings of your sour cream. It should have gone fairly solid - meaning it will jiggle around a bit in the bowl, but it won't be a liquid.

It will have a consistency similar to a soft jelly, slipping around in the bowl as a soft but solid mass. When the sour cream has reached the above stage, line another bowl with 3 or 4 layers of clean cheese cloth.

Spoon the sour cream into the cheese cloth lined bowl. Tie up the corners of the cloth to make a bag and hang it to drain - don't forget to place a container underneath the bag to catch the whey. Let it drain until it reaches your preferred consistency.

The draining will only take a matter of hours. You may let it drain until it is as firm as a cream cheese, or stop draining it when it reaches a richly textured sour cream. If you forget about it and it thickens too much, simply stir a bit of the drained whey back in until it's just right.

Spoon the sour cream from the cheese cloth into a clean container and store it in the refrigerator. Remember, this is fresh, it will only last a few days. Ours never has a chance to grow old!