Passionate Homemaking

I was really nervous about trying to make my own sour cream from my kefir, and even more nervous to taste it! But, amazingly enough, I did! And my husband did so as well. We had some fajitas for lunch a few weeks back, topped with homemade sour cream, and salsa. It was definitely not the texture of normal sour cream (although with more experimenting it has received a better consistency), but it had a pleasant taste, and worked quite well. The key is to not let it sit too long, otherwise it gets a little too sour!

I was inspired with this idea from Capturing Today. She explains how to make kefir and about using kefir to make sour cream and cream cheese here. I thought…use kefir for sour cream! Perfect!

Here’s how to do it:

1. Culture your kefir grains as usual. (Read more about this process here). I use raw milk, and kefir grains in a quart size glass jar. Covered and store in a cupboard for 12-36 hours.

2. Once it is complete, thickened nicely, line a strainer with cheesecloth or cloth napkin, over a large pot. Wet the cheesecloth slightly.

3. Remove the kefir grains and dump the contents into the strainer. Depending on the amount of liquid, allow it to sit for 8-12 hours. I found 7-8 hours to be sufficient to make a sour cream consistency. Start at beginning of the day, and taste it throughout the day. Overnight is too long from my experience. Leaving it longer allows it to dry even more and it takes on more of a cream cheese consistency, which also can be used as cream cheese, although we didn’t care for it that well. The resulting liquids that drain off are kefir whey, which is wonderful for soaking your grains, legumes, etc.

Hooray! Sour cream made from raw milk, and cultured with kefir grains! Can’t get much better than that! One less thing to buy in packaged form!