Homemade Sour Cream and Buttermilk

Sour Cream
My next project was to make sour cream from my raw milk. To do this, I needed to purchase a small container of good quality buttermilk from the store. In a quart jar, I add 2 cups of raw cream and 2T. buttermilk. Put the lid on and shake. I'll let this stand in a warm place for 24-48 hours.  To make a more mild tasting sour cream, similar to store bought, try pasteurizing the cream before adding the buttermilk.

Buttermilk
Traditional buttermilk is what's left over after making butter. But my husband likes to drink cultured buttermilk.
I'll mix 2 cups of raw milk with 1/4 cup of my store bought buttermilk and cover. Like the sour cream, this will rest in a warm place for 24 hours. Now that I've made my own buttermilk, I won't need to buy it the next time. I'll use 1/4 cup of the homemade buttermilk to start my next batch.


All these projects took only minutes to prepare and tomorrow I'll have lots of good quality, additive free dairy products for my family. And I should add that all this was done at a fraction of the cost to buy all these things at the grocery store.

Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living offers many recipes for homemade goods like the ones you've read about here.  You get a wealth of information for the price.  If you buy it through the link at the left, I'll earn a few cents, too.

Go over to the REAL FOOD WEDNESDAY blog hop to find more whole food recipes.