28 Jul For Tasty Vegetables Plus Probiotics Try Sour Cream

I have found a secret weapon to get my husband and adult son to eat all the vegetables I serve them.

Actually, it helps me enjoy my vegetables, though I admit to being more motivated than they are to eat them.

The secret is homemade sour cream. We add a spoonful to a bowl of soup or on top sauteed greens. The creamy taste counteracts the bitterness that most people don’t like about vegetables.

You could probably use store bought sour cream to improve the taste of your vegetables, but I don’t recommend it. Store bought is pasteurized so that means most of the nutrients have been lost in the process. Homemade sour cream has probiotics, which are so good for digestive health, and overall health.

Before you get discouraged and wonder where you would find the time to make homemade sour cream, let me tell you it’s easy. It’s the same process as making yogurt, only you use cream rather than milk.

First buy a pint of organic cream with no additives. Many brands add carrageenan (What is that!?) or other additives to cream. Maybe the additives aren’t harmful, but your body doesn’t need them. If you can’t find pure cream, buy what you can. I certainly have, though I usually find pure cream at a farmers market, and sometimes at Whole Foods.

If you are really lucky, you can find pastured cream. I don’t mean pasteurized, I mean that the cows who gave the cream were raised in a pasture, eating their natural food of grass. Healthy cows give healthy milk and cream. Often pastured cows are raised without antibiotics or hormones, both of which you should probably avoid.

To sour the cream, heat the cream gently over medium heat until it bubbles around the sides and steam rises from the middle. That’s about 180 degrees, if you have a candy thermometer. Remove from heat and let the cream cool to about 115-110. Your finger up to the first knuckle can stay in the cream without it being so hot you pull it out (for those of you without thermometers). You can speed up the cooling by setting the saucepan into a larger pan of ice water, or just transferring the cream to a mixing bowl.

You will need a tablespoon of yogurt as your starter. I buy a small container of plain yogurt. Once I have made sour cream, I save the last spoonful for making the next batch. Put the yogurt in a cup and pour in a small amount, about ¼ cup, of the cream. This warms the starter. Now stir very well.

Stirring is a secret to success. Yogurt and sour cream have billions of live microbes in them. The stirring distributes them throughout the cream. So don’t hesitate to stir, and when you think you’ve stirred enough, stir some more.

Pour one third of the cream/yogurt mixture back into the bowl/pot of cream and stir. Pour in the next third, and stir. Pour in the final third and stir.

Now pour the cream into a glass jar and cover with a dish cloth and rubber band. The microbes, or probiotics, are living and growing, and will produce gases that need to escape through the cloth. Set the jar in a warm place, like an oven with the light on, for 24 hours. Don’t jostle or stir it while waiting, so you don’t disturb the microbes.

This is a fun little science experiment. Can you tell I used to teach science to little kids?

Once the time has passed, cap the jar and store in the refrigerator. It won’t go bad, but if you leave it a long time (not likely because it is so useful), it can dry out, grow mold, or get too tangy tasting.

Add it to cooked food, not before you cook or heat something, as that can kill the probiotics. There are more probiotics in a spoonful of sour cream than in most probiotic pills. It is also likely a more diverse set of strains of probiotics.

Isn’t it fun to eat something healthy that tastes good?

Besides soups and stews, like beef stroganoff, I add sour cream to berries for a yummy dessert or breakfast. It’s also good on a baked potato, or sweet potato, and on Mexican dishes like a taco salad. Stir some chopped dill into sour cream and you have a great sauce for salmon. Also consider using it as a base for a dip or salad dressing.

Enjoy!

https://wellnessmama.com/59276/how-to-make-yogurt-tutorial/

http://www.mercola.com/article/milk/no-milk.aspx