Being a big fan of Good Culture Cottage Cheese, I had to try the company’s sour cream when I spotted it recently for the first time. I rarely use sour cream, but I plowed through this tub. What a smooth, luscious texture and mellow flavor. I reheated some leftover roasted Yukon Golds with a big spoonful of the sour cream, mashing everything together in the skillet and adding cracked black pepper and chives. Not the healthiest lunch but….wow. When I went back to the store for more, I discovered yet another new sour cream that, like Good Culture, has a lot of feel-good features. Both are made with organic milk from grass-fed cows, contain live probiotic bacteria and no stabilizers and had me licking the spoon.
Good Culture Sour Cream and Alexandre Family Farm Sour Cream bring this American dairy classic into the modern era with their good-for-you and good-for-the-planet claims. Both are new, debuting this spring.
Good Culture is a Southern California company, but the sour cream is made at a Wisconsin plant from Wisconsin milk. Alexandre Family Farm, a large family-owned operation, is in Northern California, with some 4,500 cows on 9,000 acres near the Oregon border. This enormous herd is split into milking groups of roughly 200 cows that graze together and are moved to fresh pasture after each milking. The weather is mild and moist enough in this part of coastal California to guarantee grass year-round. The company makes all its dairy products at its own creamery near Oakland. The Alexandre cows produce A2 milk, with the beta-casein variant that some people find easier to digest.
New and notable: organic sour cream with probiotics
The two products have a similarly thick, silky texture but the flavors are subtly different. The Alexandre sour cream has more of a cultured taste, a faintly nutty, buttery, buttermilky flavor. The Good Culture product is more mellow. If I had to choose, I’d pick the Alexandre.
Unlike most sour-cream manufacturers, both of these producers boost their culture with probiotic bacteria—the type you would find in yogurt with live active cultures. The Good Culture product also includes enzymes added for a firmer, creamier mouthfeel.
If you’ve wondered about the difference, sour cream is lower in fat than crème fraîche—roughly 18 to 20 percent versus about 30 percent. That’s because sour cream is typically made by culturing cream plus milk, while crème fraîche is cultured cream. The extra fat explains why a sauce with crème fraîche won’t break if boiled; sour cream tends to curdle with heat. For topping baked potatoes, enhancing cole slaw or adding creaminess to your summer pesto, these excellent new sour creams have you covered.
Gordon’s Red Potato Salad with Whole-Grain Mustard Dressing
With barbecue season imminent, everyone needs a good potato salad. In Napa Valley, where I live, chef Sally Gordon’s potato salad is justifiably famous, even though she long ago closed her eponymous café in Yountville. In my lightly adapted version of her recipe, sour cream replaces some of the mayonnaise and scallions replace red onion. Otherwise, it’s the beloved original.
Adapted from San Francisco by Janet Fletcher (Oxmoor House).
2 pounds small, red-skinned potatoes, quartered
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley
1-1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
2 tablespoons chopped capers
4 scallions, white and pale green parts only, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
1-1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
Kosher or sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
White wine vinegar, optional
Put the potatoes in a large pot with salted water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce the heat, and simmer gently until the potatoes are just tender when pierced, about 10 minutes. Test often and be careful not to overcook.
While the potatoes cook, whisk together the mayonnaise, sour cream, parsley, tarragon, capers, scallions, mustards, 1/2 teaspoon salt, several grinds of pepper and 2 tablespoons water.
Drain the potatoes and immediately add them to the dressing. Toss well, then let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate until chilled. Thin the dressing at serving time with a little more water if needed. Taste for seasoning; adjust, if needed, with a few drops of wine vinegar.
Serves 6