In our family’s quest to eat more healthful foods – while keeping our budget intact – I’ve decided to take on a few new challenges in the kitchen. I recently made a list of projects that I intend to tackle in the coming months. One of the first projects I tried was making my own cream cheese.
You may wonder why I’d want to make my own cream cheese when I could buy an 8-ounce brick of it at the store for a couple of dollars. First, I enjoy trying new things when I cook; it makes preparing foods more of an adventure than an everyday, mundane task. Second, when I read how simple it was to make cream cheese, I had to try it for myself. And finally, homemade cream cheese is teeming with probiotics, those tiny living organisms that support the digestive system and overall health.
Even better, making homemade cream cheese doesn’t take any special equipment and requires less than five minutes of hands-on work.
Here’s how to get started:
Line a strainer with a clean, lint-free dishcloth and place it inside a bowl.
Pour a 32-ounce container of good-quality yogurt into the strainer, cover with it another towel and leave it on the counter to drain. When the yogurt stops draining (in about 3 to 4 hours), gather the dishcloth and tie it to a wooden spoon, being careful not to squeeze the mixture. Suspend the wooden spoon across the top of a deep container, such as a glass pitcher. Continue draining, until the mixture stops dripping.* (This took about 48 hours for me.)
Voila! You have just made your own cream cheese, which you can store in an airtight container for up to one month.
It spreads beautifully, even when eaten at refrigerated temperatures. You can sweeten your cream cheese with pure maple syrup, chopped fresh raspberries, or some honey and vanilla. Throw in chopped chives and garlic or add fresh dill to create a savory spread.
*You can reserve the yellowish whey to make lacto-fermented foods. (The whey keeps for up to six months when refrigerated.) Lacto-fermentation is a term for an age-old method of preserving foods, a topic I’ll explore in a future post.
