We bought powdered sour cream for our COVID-19 food supply. That was a mistake

Josh CentersContributor - May 13, 2020

I haven’t been to a store in two months. And while my family is far from starving, there are some staples we’ve been missing, like sour cream. Last we
[See the full post at: We bought powdered sour cream for our COVID-19 food supply. That was a mistake]

18  

Ha ha! Thank you for your troubles!  I am entirely comfortable never trying this now  : )

 

Happy to have spared you the pain.

 

I bought a pack of canned mac & cheese once for the emergency stock. That was a mistake too. I ate the content of one can, threw away the other cans. I have a rather strong aversion to wasting food, but that was just too vile. I’m pretty sure coprophages won’t touch the thing. They have standards, after all.

 

Thanks for the report. I’ll have a bit more to say about mac and cheese soon.

 

Good to know. Curious – do you think you could bake or cook with it?

 

I wouldn’t want to ruin a dish by putting this vile powder in it.

 

What a bummer! Again, thanks for the review I had wondered about this product a couple of weeks ago.

 

I apparently get 1-2 containers of sour cream with every grocery delivery. I need to do a better job checking before ordering…because I now have 5 containers in our fridge. Too bad it also doesn’t freeze well.

 

If you really want to make sour cream, you’ll have better success using a kefir starter. Commercial sour cream is basically the high fat version of buttermilk. And kefir is just the Whole Foods version of buttermilk.

All of these cousin cultures are dead simple to make. You don’t need a yogurt maker. You just need a warm room.

Actually, you don’t even need starter. Just use some commercial buttermilk or some kefir from your last batch. I’m just suggesting starter, since you can keep it in the fridge until needed.

I keep shelf stable milk in the pantry specifically for making kefir. No need to sterilize it. Just warm it up, inoculate, and wait a day.

Personally, I’ve never had much luck culturing raw milk, particularly without a starter. If it doesn’t have the right organisms in it to begin with, you’ll just end up with a watery mess.

 

Thanks for the tip. Could you use a yogurt starter? My wife just made one the other day.

 

Yogurt is really closely related to kefir/sour cream. But I find the taste a bit more acidic. High fat yogurt is absolutely delicious, however, and close enough to sour cream to use in most contexts.

 

I wonder if the yogurt setting on an Instant-Pot would be helpful in making sour cream? Most Instant-Pots or similar multi-cookers come with a yogurt making setting.

If you have a whole fat yogurt on hand you can make a cream cheese out of it (there are very fine mesh plastic filter funnels out there just for this purpose) that strain out the excess water / liquid whey. A store bought plain whole milk or plain Greek yogurt works to make yogurt cream cheese, I would think home-made high fat yogurt would make excellent & tasty yogurt cream cheese (no additives)

 

Yogurt cultures at a higher temperature (110 F or thereabouts) than kefir/ buttermilk/sour cream. You’re likely to kill your culture in an instant pot.

A warm room really works. It may take a couple of days, but it’ll get there.

 

Oh dear, this is disappointing news. I usually have quite good luck with HHF stuff.

Hoosier Hill Farms Cream Cheese Powder is pretty good though I add less water to it than recommended for a thicker cream cheese (you add a little water, mix, add a little more, mix again etc until you get the consistency you are after). When combined with a dried veggie / veggie soup mix of your choosing & something like vegetable flavor Better Than Boullion it makes a pretty tasty veggie cream cheese for spreading on bagels, bread, etc. Once made the reconstituted cream cheese refrigerates well though it tastes okay when made with room temperature water (just weird that way because you usually expect cream cheese for a spread to be fridge cold)!

Also the Hoosier Hill Farms Heavy Cream powder is good but it needs to be vigorously whisked or blended with a blender to get the consistency right otherwise it too will seem runny. It’s definitely creamier & richer than either powdered non-fat dry milk or powdered whole milk. The non-fat is the most common powdered milk version out there (food pantries that get USDA commodities stock non-fat powdered milk), powdered whole milk is a little harder to find (go online for it, you’re unlikely to get it at a big box discounter or most supermarkets)

I’m known to mix the HHF products I have used with success with boullions or stocks of various flavors (veggie, mushroom, tomato, chicken, beef, ham, pork, etc). There are a lot of one dish / casserole type recipes which benefit from using something besides just reconstituted add water milk or cream (and you can lower the fat content in your Thanksgiving or Christmas home-made mashed potatoes by using a flavored boullion or stock instead of cream or milk when you mash the potatoes, I usually use chicken or veggie, but experiment around to find what you prefer

I know one of the Mennonite grocery stores close-ish to me sells an excellent mix for sour cream & chive/onion dip mix (will look up the brand for those interested, all their dip mixes I have tried have been pretty tasty), I would presume they also regularly stock & sell a sour cream powder though I don’t know what brand it is (it’s sold like bulk food, pre-packed in plain plastic containers of varying sizes & weights). Next time I’m in there, I will ask what brand sour cream powder they carry. This discount grocery store (part salvage store & part bulk foods as well as a bit of fresh & frozen stuff) has a very solid Old Order Mennonite customer base, these people are very clever & frugal foodies, so anything as bad as your HHF sour cream trial would *never* be tolerated by them.

Most Old Order Anabaptists (Amish Mennonite) make A LOT of their foods from scratch (I love their basic cookbooks, they are geniuses at making substitutions as well as not beholden to brands or ultra processed foods), they keep deep home / farmstead pantries as a way of life like Mormons & LDS church members but because they live more grid-free, they are far more dependent on staples like powdered dairy products & powdered eggs than the Mormon & LDS communities who do not eschew grid connected electricity, etc. I would presume they also either make or buy a lot of their own dried & canned etc foods & so if they were to recommend a given powdered food (or warn me off of it), I’d follow their recommendation to the letter.

 

I have heard good things about the Hoosier Hill heavy cream, so I *may* give it a chance. I’ve been trying a lot of powdered foods for an upcoming guide, and the powdered milk isn’t too bad. We have a Mennonite community near us, and I haven’t heard about them using many powdered eggs. They seem to have plenty of the fresh kind.

 

Ive worked in a commercial kitchen 26 years and thought this might be handy for some of our sauces or dips. I wish Id researched it before purchasing. my experience was identical. never in my life have i tasted anything so awful and thats no exaggeration. Its so disgusting its difficult to put into words just how gross this tastes. I couldnt even swallow it. The taste made me immediately spit it out and run for mouthwash to try to save what taste buds werent annihilated by this completely useless trash. The texture is almost as bad. Very gritty. It went straight into the trash and amazon refunded me. 

 

Thanks for the report and verification. This stuff is truly heinous. Alaska Prepper reviewed it and had the same reaction we did. https://youtu.be/QrxtSYP5wPc

 

Ill take a look. On a more positive side, EVERYTHING ive used from Augason has been perfect. Especially the veggies.they even still have some “crisp” in them after rehydration. gotta buy em at the right times though, on amazon auguson frequently drops to under half price. Even the milk sub (though not entirely made of milk) tastes EXACTLY like fresh milk, not like typical powdered milk.

Edited for spelling error.