ZC What did you eat today?

[Fiorella]

Awesome! Glad to know you gave it an adventurous go!

[odedia]

After two days of stuck on tuna salad and eggs, treated myself to shawarma today. Man this stuff never gets old. It’s like the bacon alternative if you’re Jewish!

[roxanne]

Hey @Fiorella, how did your first homemade creme fraiche turn out? Looks good!

[Debby]

I had to go look it up to see what it is! Sounds/looks good!

I just started eating cheese last year. Enjoying some Finlandia imported Havarti this week…not local farm fresh or home made, but…the price was right. (On sale $1.49 for 8.8 ounce wheel)

[Fiorella]

The creme fraiche turned out very good!

Here’s what I did. I put it in very warm (almost hot) tap water, and placed in oven that was turned on for only 15 minutes. Left it in oven, turned off, over night to sit in residual heat. I had a towel on bottom of jars to protect them from touching hot metal. I used recycled pickle and olive jars

Then next day I removed jars from water bath, placed them in a cupboard, block out light and coldest part of the kitchen, and they sat there one day. This is what they looked like…soft peak formed, and nice sour tasting creme

Then I put them in the fridge and the creme became very very stiff

It is delicious! I will never buy sour cream or creme fraiche ever…this is a much better product, tastier and a whole lot cheaper!

[Debby]

Wow! There is no end to your amazing food photos! I am not even hungry, but i could just reach into the monitor and taste that creme fraiche!

[roxanne]

Woohoo, I’m glad it working for you, it’s really quite easy if you have the patience to let it culture. At first I was afraid it would spoil if I left it unrefrigerated too long, but now I know if it doesn’t thicken, just leave it out longer!

[kate]

Excellent thickness which I love. What did you start with? Pasteurized cream?

[Fiorella]

I started with pasteurized HWC, and store bought sour cream as starter.

Used the quantities per @MableSyrup shown below

DIY sour cream (technically creme fraiche) ;)

Edit per advice of @roxanne below - which is great, because creme fraiche is even more spendy than sour cream. Sometimes you buy more HWC than you use before it expires. I know… hard to believe. BUTT! This is a great opportunity to save money! Fresh cream or over the expiration date, it don’t matter. For the first batch you’ll want to have a small container of buttermilk on hand. After that you can make a new batch using some of the old batch. I use 3 T buttermilk (or sour cream from last ba…

[kate]

Thanks! Your method in the oven seems pretty easy. I’ll give it a try!

[kate]

Oven temp?

[Fiorella]

I put it at 150 def F for 15 minutes. Lowest setting on my oven. It didn’t get to 150. It got to about 120 deg F. I just did it to create a bit of a warm box for the water bath to sit it.

[Cat]

Very impressive- I admit to buying It in Trader Joe’s.

[farmgirl]

I put it at 150 def F for 15 minutes. Lowest setting on my oven. It didn’t get to 150. It got to about 120 deg F. I just did it to create a bit of a warm box for the water bath to sit it.

Creme fraiche uses mesophilic culture which doesn’t require heat to thicken, unlike yogurt which uses a thermophilic culture. You don’t need to put this in the oven at all. Just leave it out on your counter till it thickens.

[kairos]

Butter from happy cows. And I made a happy plate.

[Fiorella]

Today I made: Fettuccine a la carbonara. Yes it is ZC!!

[Zsu]

OMG!!! I about died just reading this. Now I need to wipe the drool off the keyboard!
I have a question, though. This is 5 eggs and the bacon. How much of this is a serving? Did you work the macros out? Just curious, thank you!

[Fiorella]

Not really. All I care about is to stay below 20 grams carbs (which is almost zero), and below 50 g protein. I eat fat to satiety, and no calorie counting. Eating ZC eliminates need for macro tracking…it all becomes really really easy.

[Becky]

Treated myself to pork belly from the local market for the 1st day of ZC March

[Abrane]

chuck steak… 24oz