How to Make Sour Cream and Cream Cheese

And this is proper cream cheese! Rested just long enough.

Learn how to make delicious and unbelievably easy sour cream and cream cheese with just 2 ingredients. The world constantly amazes me. You can halve, or double the recipe if you want. The more fat % you use, the richer the result will be.

The recipe is here, and pictures of the process are below:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream (33% fat), table cream (18% fat), or half-and-half (10% fat)*

• 1/4 cup buttermilk (1.5% fat)*

• 1 pint sterilized jar**

*Note: Buttermilk must have "bacterial cultures or live cultures" in the ingredient list. Both the buttermilk and cream can be pasteurized but avoid ultra-pasteurized.

**Note: You really should sterilize the jar(s) to avoid any bad bacteria getting in that could poison you.

Directions:

How to sterilize a jar: Not absolutely necessary, but if you choose not to then use a very clean jar. Sterilize one of two ways: 1) heat the clean jar(s) for 1 hour at 320F/160C for one hour in your oven, 2) add clean jar(s) to a pot and cover with water. Lightly boil 15 minutes. Remove jars by straining water out or remove with metal tongs. Let them dry and cool completely before using.

To make sour cream:

1. Mix buttermilk and cream together in the jar.

2. Cover and let sit at room temperature (68-75°F) 12-24 hours.

3. When it's ready you can stir and it should be thickened and taste like sour cream. Cover and refrigerate and use for up to 10 days. Yields ~1 cup sour cream.

To make cream cheese:

1. If you want to make cream cheese, wrap your sour cream snuggly in 3 or 4 layers of cheesecloth, tie closed, and position so it's hanging above a bowl or deep container. I do this by tying the cheesecloth bag to a wooden spoon (see picture below).

2. Cover and let drain 6-12 hours at room temperature. Taste it to see if it's ready. Note: If you let it go too long you'll start getting cultured butter (not a bad thing, but it's not cream cheese).

3. Mix in salt (usually 1/8 to 1/4 tsp.) if desired, cover, and refrigerate and use for up to 10 days. Yields ~1/2 cup cream cheese.

To see the process, look below:

Sterilizing using the boiling technique. Technically you don't have to sterilize if your bottles are very clean, but sterilizing helps.

These pictures are just to show the specifications of my buttermilk and cream for your reference.

As you can see, the buttermilk has bacterial culture and both of them are pasteurized. This is ideal! Avoid ultra-pasteurized!

Mix cream and buttermilk together.

Cover and let sit 12-24 hours!

This is what it looks like when you mix it together.

The next day:

The next day (24 hours later) you can stir it about 30 seconds and it will be nice and thick! Amazing. You can cover and refrigerate it because you now have sour cream.

How to make Cream Cheese:

Take your homemade sour cream (this might be possible with storebought sour cream if it has live cultures) and add it to 3 layers of cheesecloth placed atop a strainer or bowl.

Tie it up well. Next we'll suspend it so the whey can drain out.

This is how I set mine up so the whey would drain out. Make sure the cheesecloth has space to drain. Note: you can do the straining setup differently than I did.

Now you can cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and strain ~12 hours at room temperature to make cream cheese!

After resting about 16 hours. To be honest this is actually cultured butter, not cream cheese. I probably could have stopped around 8 hours, but now I know the general time frame of cream cheese, which depends on your room temperature and strength of the bacterial culture.

The tastiest boi. Perfect texture and taste!

A pretty lady!