Sour Cream

 Sour Cream

Yup! I’m going to share yet another basic recipe with you. I learned this from Executive Chef Amit Chand of Hotel Novotel - Pune, during a cookery workshop that he had invited me to. Sour cream is a very versatile dairy product. Among other things, sour cream is used in dips; it is blobbed over baked jacket-potatoes and is also used as salad dressing. Store bought Sour Cream tubs are quite expensive. I see no reason for you to spend that kind of money when I can guide you to make sour cream at home, and quite easily at that. Also, the final result to the main dish for which you use the homemade sour cream is not going to be different at all. I promise!! :-)

Ingredients:

200 mils fresh cream (refrigerated)

½ -1 teaspoon lime juice





Method:

1. In a bowl, add the cream and whisk till the cream begins to thicken.
   
   
   
   
2. Add ½ teaspoon of lemon juice and whisk again until the cream thickens a bit more. Taste the cream, if it does not have that perfect hint of sourness, add a wee bit more.
3. Beat the cream till it forms soft, semi-stiff peaks. When you achieve that consistency, you have successfully made sour cream without spending a bundle. Enjoy!
   
   

Chef Notes:

1. Preferably make this in small batches to ensure the cream does not turn to clarified butter. I say this because most of us (me included) are home cooks and not professional chefs.
2. I beat the cream by hand with a whisk. Give it a go by hand. It’s a wonderful experience to see the cream work under your hands, though, if you're in a lazy or rushed mode, feel free to pick up that hand blender.
3. The sour cream should have a tinge of sourness; it should not be extremely tart in flavor. What you need is a very mild flavor of sour.
4. Having now made this an umpteen number of times, for family and friends, I can say with certainly that depending on the tartness of the lime, the quantity of lime juice required will only vary between ½ a lime to 1 lime.
5. When I say ‘soft, semi-stiff peaks’, I mean when you lift the cream on the whisk, the blobs that fall from it should form soft peaks in the bowl as they fall in. 
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