How to Make Crème Fraîche (check out those gourmet-looking accent marks, oo-la-la)

Written By admind Friday, December 12, 2008 Add Comment Edit

Not only is making your own sour cream at home easy, but it will be the most amazing sour cream you've ever tasted. Now, for the rest of this post we are going to stop calling it sour cream, because it's actually Crème Fraîche, and yes, it's French.

Crème fraîche is originally from Normandy, France, and simply means "fresh cream," which is funny since it's not fresh cream, it's sour cream. That aside, crème fraîche is such a great ingredient - you can cook with it, use it anyway you use sour cream, and sweetened, makes the best whipped dessert topping ever.

This video recipe shows the simple two-day process for turning plain cream into crème fraîche, but make sure you pay attention to the part of the video that says to use "pasteurized" not "ultra-pasteurized" cream. "Ultra-pasteurized" cream is heated to a higher temperature when processed and will not work as well.

Other than that, make sure all your tools and jars are super-clean, and there's really nothing to go wrong. While you're waiting for your crème fraîche to do its thing, you can think of all the recipes to use it with - salad dressing, smoked salmon, horseradish sauce for roast beef, potato pancakes, baked potatoes, pies, fresh fruit, and… I have to stop. Enjoy!

Click here for ingredients and recipe transcript.