Sour Cream

It tastes so good and it sounds so yuck. Strangely it is exactly what it sounds like. Soured cream.

I cannot tell you how many times I have thought 'I wish I had a little bit of sour cream to go with this dish'... Had I known the ingredients to make sour cream were sitting in my refrigerator, my wishing could have become a reality.

When we were out of ranch dressing or ketchup, bread, cereal, peanut butter, or yogurt I would add them to the grocery list.  All along the ingredients to make these things were already in my kitchen. I just had no idea I could make them myself.

Lesson learned.


Here is what I use:
1 Cup heavy cream
1/4 Cup buttermilk
Mason jar with lid

Here is what I do:
Mix together cream and buttermilk in a mason jar and sit it in the middle part of the stove as you make dinner. You can watch the temperature on it if you'd like (heat to about 80-85 degrees).... but a warmed cream works just fine for me.  Put a lid on the jar and set it on top of the refrigerator overnight, or about 12 hours. The next morning you should have a thickened cream. Put it in the refrigerator and use within a week or two.

Enjoy!

Ricotta Cheese

I'm a little slow on the cheesemaking. It's kind of ridiculous. I have everything I need to do most of the recipes in the book Home Dairy, but something keeps me from trying it. I think it's because this is a whole new realm for me. And well, to be perfectly honest, I thought only hippies made their own cheese. (Sorry) Whatever. Homemade dairy is good, and I hope I have a dairy cow of my own someday.

Tonight I made ricotta for the first time ever. I was doubtful. I was actually pretty sure it wasn't going to work because my attempts at mozzarella were just plain embarrassing. But my ricotta worked and it tasted so unbelievably amazing that I'm not sure if I will stomach commercial ricotta again.

I followed the exact recipe in Ashley English's book Home Dairy. I didn't get the yield of 1 pound that the book boasts, but we got a decent amount.

Here's what I used:
8 Cups Whole Milk
1 Cup Heavy Cream
1/2 Cup Lemon Juice
1/4 teaspoon of calcium chloride, mixed with 1/4 cup cold sterilized water. *
1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt
dairy thermometer
large saucepan
colander
cheese cloth

*you can get calcium chloride online or at cheesemaking/wine & beer brewing shops. If you are local I recommend Grape & Granary.*

Here's what I did:
Mix milk, cream & lemon juice in a large saucepan with a metal spoon. Warm directly over medium-high heat until you reach 170 degrees. I only stirred the mixture once to keep it from sticking.
Then I added my calcium chloride/cold water mixture and gave it a little stir. I kept the pan over heat during this step and then just kept my eye on the thermometer until it reached 195 degrees. I had to adjust my heat a few times to keep it from boiling.

Once it hit 195 degrees I removed my pan from the heat and it continued to rise to 200 degrees. Then I just let the pan sit there and rest while I made dinner.

After about 20 minutes I spooned the curds into a colander that I lined with a double-layer of cheese cloth and I let the mixture sit for another 15 - 20 minutes or so.

That's it.

I used a dollop on dinner and it went from meh... to ohmygoodness!

Dinner was Fettucini with pan-fried Tilapia and some veggies (2 carrots, 6 mushrooms, 1 Cup Kale, 2 Cup Spinach, 2 Cloves Garlic sauteed).

Enjoy!

Whip it

Whipped butter in 4 minutes? Don't mind if I do.

 

I don't know if you heard, but we won a KitchenAid mixer! I am already smitten with her beauty and power. She needs a name because I may love her more than the dog.

Butter

ingredients

1 pint heavy cream

directions

1. Mix heavy cream in stand mixer on medium speed for about a minute. 

2. Bump up the speed to high for another 2 to 3 minutes. 

It's ready when the butter forms together and buttermilk separates. 

3. Strain butter from buttermilk. 

4. Rinse butter until water runs clear. 

5. Place butter on a cutting board and fold over and over pushing out the remaining liquid. 

6. Refrigerate

Good Bacteria

For my birthday, six months ago, I bought the book Home Dairy by Ashleigh English. I read it cover to cover at least twice but didn't try a single recipe...until yesterday.

Yogurt is so good for you and so easy to make.  I cannot see us buying commercial yogurt ever again. Unless we eat everything up and need a new starter.

Below is exactly what I did as a novice yogurt maker, and our yogurt came out perfect. It was thick, and it balanced the tangy and sweet flavors wonderfully.

On the next go round, I may strain the yogurt in a cheese cloth for an even thicker consistency. I mixed in some peach butter with one serving and it was AMAZING!


Yogurt

ingredients
3 Cups 1% milk
2 Tablespoons honey-flavored Greek yogurt

directions
1. Heat milk in a double boiler until it reaches 180 degrees.
2. Pre-heat slow cooker on low.
3. Remove milk from heat and let cool to 110 - 115 degrees.
4. Stir in yogurt until well mixed.
5. Pour mixture into 3 jelly jars, seat lid and tighten rim.
6. Turn slow cooker off and place jars of yogurt inside and cover with lid.
7. Let sit overnight.
8. Refrigerate and eat. Use for up to two weeks.

One of the best parts of this process was explaining to our 7-year-old daughter the difference between good bacteria and bad bacteria. Her interpretation went something like this: "There are two kinds of bacteria. One is the kind that eats dead birds and one is in yogurt that we eat." I'll take that. If she one day wins a Nobel prize for her work with bacteria, I will look back on our first yogurt making days with a smile. 

I highly recommend giving Ashleigh's book a read.  I hope to try out butter and mozzarella cheese sometime this week!