Crème Fraîche

Several French recipes ask for crème fraîche, but it is difficult to find, expensive, and (apparently) not as good as what is available in Europe. So I've learned how to make it. Essentially it is a culture. I suspect it is mimicking the fresh cream we would get from Jean-Paul and Georgette when I was a boy - we'd laugh at my dad and be disgusted that he'd eat what we called 'crème sûre', or soured cream, i.e.: cream that had gone off. Now I realize my father has gourmet appetites, as he was eating crème fraîche, while I denied myself the pleasures of this mild, rich food for the sake of what I thought was 'gross'. So now I'm making up for lost time. Since unpasteurized cream is no longer legally available in Canada, it's possible to mimick the natural process by adding culture from butter milk.

 

1 cup heavy cream

2 Tbsp. (or more) buttermilk

1. Pour the cream and buttermilk in a glass jar with the lid just resting on top and not screwed down.
2. Leave it on the counter for 24-48 hours, shaking the jar whenever you think of it. Do not refrigerate it at this point! Refrigeration dramatically decreases the bacterial activity of the cultures that transform the cream into crème fraîche.
3. The cream will become very thick, and you will have to shake it more and more vigorously as it thickens. If you don't shake the jar, the cultured part on top will seal off the liquid cream at the bottom and you'll have an uneven culturing, the top super thick and the bottom just plain liquid cream.
4. Once it's reached the thickness you like (from stirred yogurt to thick mascarpone in texture) put it in the refrigerator and it will keep for about two weeks. Just keep in mind that, even in the refrigerator, the culture, as a living organism, will continue to thicken the cream.
5. I've taken to simply adding more cream when the crème fraîche starts to run down instead of using more buttermilk. If the crème fraîche has been unused in the refrigerator for a long time, I give it a sniff test and if it smells bad, I dispose of it and start fresh again.