Smetana – Ukrainian sour cream (hand-scooped from raw milk)

Ingredients for 6 servings:

• 3 liters of milk (raw milk) from the farm
• 1 cup of natural yogurt

Instructions

Working time approx. 5 minutes; Rest period approx. 2 days; Total time approx. 2 days 5 minutes

traditional Ukrainian cuisine

Pour the raw milk into a pot, stir in yogurt (alternatively, a yogurt starter from a health food store), cover, and let stand at room temperature for 2 days. When the milk has thickened, carefully skim the cream into a mug with a tablespoon and refrigerate. After a few hours in the refrigerator, the sour cream will thicken; then simply stir until smooth and use. A good sour cream should “pull threads” from the spoon. 3 liters of milk yields approximately 200 ml of sour cream. The remaining sour milk can be used to make quark or simply as yogurt. Notes: Sour cream is an essential part of Ukrainian cuisine and has many uses. For example, many Ukrainian dishes have an obligatory dollop of sour cream on top—whether it’s borscht, holubtsi, varenyky, or nalisnyky. Sour cream is also used in sauces, in the roux for the Ukrainian national dish, borscht, or simply as a salad dressing. Sour cream has a much higher fat content than sour cream. An equivalent here in Germany would be something between crème fraîche and mascarpone. Unfortunately, this recipe doesn’t work with homogenized milk from the supermarket. It only works with untreated, raw milk from the farm.