How to make homemade sour cream

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Homemade sour cream is one of the easiest dairy products you can make. It takes minimal time and effort and is an easy food to implement into your homemade rotation.

I have been making sour cream for probably a decade and my technique in how I make it has changed very little over that time. The reason being….. its so simple, there is not much you can change! We eat at least a quart of sour cream each week on things like tacos, in ranch dip, on potatoes and more. I also may or may not have been known to eat it right off the spoon!

Supplies

• Clean quart jar
• Loose lid or coffee filter with an elastic band
• Spoon

Ingredients

• Heavy cream– As I have a milk cow, I use the heaviest cream I can skim off my milk, but if you only have access to store-bought milk, use 33% cream or whipping cream with no additives. As I am using raw milk I like to use fresh cream that is no older than 2 days.
• Bacterial culture– There are many different sour cream cultures that you can use, but once you get one started, you can use your sour cream each week as the culture for next weeks sour cream. My very favourite culture for making sour cream is clabber. You can also buy freeze dried cultures for sour cream from any cheese supply website or you can use any basic mesophilic freeze dried culture that you use for cheesemaking.

Steps for making homemade sour cream

1. Put heavy cream into a clean quart jar.
2. Add in 1 tbsp clabber culture, 1 tbsp previous batch sour cream or a freeze dried culture according to package directions. Stir to combine (be sure to let rehydrate for a few minutes on the surface of the cream if you are using a freeze dried culture).
3. Place a loose lid on the jar (I like to use a coffee filter and elastic band). Let sit on the counter at room temperature undisturbed for 12-24 hours or until thick but bubbles have not begun to form.
4. Once your sour cream is thick as at least a greek yogurt consistency, move it to the refrigerator. It will thicken more in the fridge.

FAQs

Even though sour cream is one of the easiest foods you can make, it can come with some common problems and in this section I want to talk about some common problems and troubleshooting to help you avoid or fix them!

My sour cream tastes yeasty!

If you accidentally over ferment your sour cream, it will taste yeasty. Over fermented sour cream is a common problem when making homemade sour cream. If we let our sour cream ferment for too long, what happens is that the bacterial culture we used to start our sour cream begins to die off, and yeast (especially in cases where we are using natural cultures like clabber, or using raw milk), start to thrive. Just like when yeast overproof’s bread and leaves gas holes behind, it can do the same thing in sour cream.

When you look in your jar of sour cream, you want to see absolutely no bubbles. If you see even one tiny bubble starting to form, this is your indication that the bacteria has started to die off and the yeast has started to take hold. My go to solution here is as soon as you see a bubble forming, move your sour cream to the refrigerator.

Of course the gold standard is no bubbles at all, so to prevent yeast contamination in your sour cream you can follow these recommendations;

• Use the freshest cream possible. Older cream is much more likely to overferment and can even develop yeast contamination before your sour cream becomes thick, which is a bummer!
• Keep wild yeasts away from your sour cream. If you bake sourdough, keep it on the other side of the kitchen than your sour cream. They will cross contaminate.
• Use a strong culture. Clabber that is not well cared for or freeze dried cultures that are old, are more likely to give you yeasty tasting sour cream. Some older sour cream recipes will also call for no culture, just raw milk, unfortunately these sour cream recipes often result in a yeasty taste and can be difficult to get consistency. My recommendation is to always use some sort of bacterial culture when making sour cream.
• If it is very hot in your house, know that your sour cream will ferment a lot quicker. This means that if you usually make sour cream in 24 hours, maybe on hot days it will be ready in 12. For this reason, I check my sour cream after 12 hours every time I make it.

Is yeast contaminated sour cream safe to consume?

The problem with consuming sour cream that has bubbles or has separated is that we can’t be sure its a strain of harmless yeast. There are other contaminants such as coliform for example, that manifest in similar ways as yeast contamination (it usually looks like pin hole bubbles throughout) and these contaminants can make you or especially immune compromised individuals very sick.

As I have made sour cream for a long time, I will consume yeast contaminated sour cream if I am sure it is just a matter of me over fermenting it a bit too far. I don’t like the yeasty taste of over fermented sour cream but I will use it in baking.

The answer to this is; you can never be sure. You have to go with your comfort level and if it is going to make you loose sleep over…… well as a mom to small children that don’t let me sleep much to begin with, there is not a lot that is worth loosing sleep over! Your chickens will gladly eat it for you!

My sour cream is runny 

To prevent runny sour cream I always use the heaviest cream I can skim off, a strong culture and keep my jar of sour cream in a warm spot on the counter. If you are making your sour cream in a cold area and consistently struggling with runny sour cream, consider warming your cream up to 80F, before adding your culture in. 

If you notice that your sour cream is still runny when you are ready to move it to the fridge, let it sit on the counter for a few more hours. It will thicken up in the fridge but should be at least as thick as yogurt before you move it to the fridge. 

Can I use store bought sour cream as a culture?

I am often asked this question and my answer is…. I think so. I honestly have no experience doing this but I have heard from others, it sometimes works but often results in a runny sour cream. The big thing is to make sure the sour cream you choose has live bacterial culture on the ingredient list. Oftentimes sour cream from the store is thickened with gelatin, so if you can find a version that does not list gelatin, I think you will be better off. 

Can I use yogurt as a culture?

Sometimes people do use yogurt as a sour cream culture but my recommendation for this would be to heat your cream up before adding in the yogurt culture (probably to about 100-110F). The reason for this is that yogurt is something called a thermophilic culture, meaning a culture that prefers to thrive in warmer temperatures. Again, I have no experience with this, but I have heard from others that yogurt culture will work for making sour cream as long as you heat it up a bit first. 

My sour cream tastes bland 

A lot of times general mesophilic freeze dried cultures will not give you the typical tangy taste but will result in something similar to a mild cheese flavour. My solution for this is the culture. Choose freeze dried cultures that are meant to be made into sour cream or use clabber as your culture. Clabber makes the best sour cream! 

There is a white mold skum on the top of my sour cream

If you used clabber to culture your sour cream, it is normal to see a white mold growing on the top of your sour cream. It is edible and is a yeast called geotrichum candidum.

How long will homemade sour cream last in the fridge?

Homemade sour cream generally lasts a week to two weeks in the fridge. Often in the last days of its life when it is no longer tasting as good, I will use it in baking.

I don’t recommend eating moldy sour cream, or skimming off the mold from sour cream. Some people do this, but as sour cream is such a soft product, meaning the mold that is surface level will have deep roots, it is not recommended practise.

Can I make sour cream with milk?

I recently had a reel go semi viral on instagram showing the difference between clabber and sour cream.

The point of the reel was to show the difference between clabber and sour cream is that one is made with heavy cream and one is made with milk. One is creamy and one is more gelatinous. You can really see the difference in the reel and this answers the question of can you make sour cream with milk…. You can but it will be a significantly different product! 

Additional resources

• Read this blog post on how to start a clabber culture
• Get my favourite book on natural cheesemaking, The art of natural cheesemaking by David Asher
• Learn to make your own cheeses using clabber as a culture in the Christmas cheeseboard ebook 
• Watch this video on how to start a clabber culture

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