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What the heck is ... crème frache?
 Let’s
attack this problem at its source. (French : crème= cream + fraîche=
fresh) First, just how do you pronounce the name? The words are French,
so we assume that you must first develop a head cold and then learn how
to cough and gargle simultaneously in order to get the sound just right.
For those of us less sophisticated, we may have to settle for a crudely
enunciated version of the official pronunciation. “ krèm’
frèsh’ “ Let’s try it together “ Kkkrrrrehmmm
Ffffrrrraisssch “ (try to roll the R’s) …“Krrem-frray-shhh
“ … or as my redneck buddy would say “K…r…e…e…e…m…f…r…a…y..-..u…s…h”.
Don’t even think about trying to say it the way the French do. You
will only embarrass yourself, and probably permanently lodge your tongue
in a nasal cavity in the process. The translation is even worse than the
pronunciation. The name does not translate into English as “fresh
cream” as you might naively expect after reading the above. In fact,
it really means “spoiled cream”! See! I told you so! You just
can’t trust those French folks! They deliberately make up words
and names to confuse the rest of us. ... Just so that they can keep the
good stuff for themselves!
Crème fraîche is a slightly tangy, slightly nutty, thickened
cow’s cream. Before the age of pasteurization, crème fraîche
literally made itself while sitting on the kitchen counter, as the wild
bacteria present in the fresh cream fermented and thickened it naturally.
Today, real crème fraîche is still made that way, and is
widely available in Europe. But not so in the US, where our ever-present
“we-know-what-is-best-for-you” USDA food cops have decreed
that all dairy products in the United States must be pasteurized and rendered
dull and lifeless before they can be sold to the unsuspecting public.
Therefore, real Crème fraîche (commercially made) simply
doesn’t exist in America. Drat!, and it is such yummy stuff, too!
However, being the clever Americans that we are, we have learned how to
circumvent the bureaucrats and make a very passable industrialized, fake
crème fraîche. How? You ask?…….
Simple! First, understand that crème fraîche is to heavy
cream, exactly what yogurt is to low-fat milk. At the DairyCorp Mega-Factories,
they take fresh pasteurized (dead) heavy cream and inoculate it with exactly
the same bacterial cultures (approved by the Milk Police) as are used
to make “cultured yogurt”. After a few hours (up to a day)
at room temperature, the heavy cream has been converted into a smooth,
thickened, tangy substance that is about half way between yogurt and commercial
sour cream. Voila! America’s version of crème fraîche!
The results are generally indistinguishable from the European product
to everyone except a Frenchman – or anyone else who has actually
eaten the real stuff!. The only difference is that the American version
is made with “cultured” bacteria & pasteurized cream,
whereas the French version is made with “natural wild” bacteria
& raw cream. The slight difference in taste is mostly a result of
the faint “cooked” taste of the American product due to the
use of pasteurized (heated) cream.
What is so special about crème fraîche? Well, for one thing,
it won’t curdle and turn nasty when you heat it. In fact, you can
boil the stuff and it will still remain smooth and creamy. If you heat
sour cream too hot, it will “break” and turn into nasty little
cottage-cheesy clods floating around in watery whey –Bleah! The
same thing will happen to yogurt and milk and most other dairy products.
All this makes crème fraîche a Chef’s dream: easy to
use; easy to cook with; delightfully zesty, tasty; smooth & creamy,
hot, cold or otherwise! It adds “Ppwhang” to soups and sauces.
It thickens thin broths. It serves as a perfect carrier for herbs and
spices for use as dressing, topping, or garnish to most any dish.
Around the world, crème fraîche has several aliases. Known
as “ranskankerma” in Finland, “racreme” in Denmark,
“crema” in Mexico, and ????? in China. In the days before
we started getting fancy with our food names here in America, it was known
simply as “clabber cream” (Gramma used to tell stories about
when she was a young girl back in the 1920’s, and would sneak out
to the “spring-house” on the homestead, to slurp spoonfuls
of tart clabber cream directly from the stoneware crock that her mother
made it in.)
Crème fraîche is a member of a broad family of culinary products
made from cows milk. Ignoring all of the “curded & ripened”
products like cheese, and the “fresh fluid milk” products,
there is crème fraîche, fromage frais, fromage blanc, yogurt,
sour cream, heavy cream, light cream, double cream, whipping cream, clotted
cream, yogurt cheese, cream cheese, and half & half. So, just what
are the differences amongst these products? Let me tell you!
Crème fraîche: is
a slightly tangy, slightly nutty, thickened, fermented cream. Before the
age of pasteurization crème fraîche formed naturally as the
bacteria present in the fresh cream fermented and thickened it. Today,
most of it is made by inoculating pasteurized heavy cream with a bacterial
culture and allowing it to acidify and thicken. The “tanginess”
comes from lactic acid produced by the bacteria. The thickening comes
from the effects of that acid in polymerizing some of the milk proteins.
Sour cream: was also traditionally
made by letting fresh cream sour naturally. These days, commercially produced
sour cream is made by inoculating pasteurized light cream (Crème
fraîche is made from heavy cream) with bacteria cultures, letting
the bacteria grow until the cream is both soured and thick, and then repasteruizing
it to kill the bacteria and stop the process. Sour cream can be synthesized
by adding either pure pharmaceutical grade lactic acid (or lemon juice,
or vinegar) to fresh cream and letting it coagulate from the effects of
the acid on the proteins.
Whipping cream: in the United States
is a  fresh, pasteurized cream that has between 30% and 40% butterfat. It has
enough fat content to allow it to hold air bubbles in a stable foam, but
contains more water (milk) than heavy cream.
Heavy cream: is also a pasteurized
fresh cream that contains at least 40% butterfat.
Double cream is the British designation for super-rich cream — with
at least 48% butterfat.
Light creams: (single cream in
Britain), which average around 20% butterfat, are not as stable for cooking,
are more prone to curdling in the presence of acids or high heat. They
are, however the starting ingredient for modern commercial Sour cream.
Half-and-half: is just what it
implies; half cream and half milk. It is made exclusively for people that can’t make up their
mind as to what they want in their coffee.
Clotted cream: is a wonderful product
you can make yourself by pouring fresh heavy cream into a large paper
coffee filter and placing it into your refrigerator until about half of
the cream’s water (whey) drips out of it – there is no fermentation,
just removal of liquid water. The remaining thickened, high-solids, high-fat
“clotted” cream is delicious when flavored with dried blueberries,
stored in the fridge for a few hours, and then spread on bagels, muffins,
or toast.
Cream cheese: is a curdled high-fat
cream product that utilizes an acid-only (no bacteria involved) process
to coagulate the cream and cause the whey to separate from the fat and
milk solids. The “curd” is then homogenized, pasteurized and
blended into a thick creamy consistency.
Yogurt: is a milk product (made
from whole or low-fat milk) that has been fermented by a blend of various
bacteria: Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus Lactobacillus
casei, Lactobacillus reuteri, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, Bifidobacterium
bifidum, and Streptococcus thermophilus (pretty much any combination of
these will do) and allowed to coagulate. Of all the dairy foods,  it is
probably the most universally available, having shown up first in Asia
thousands of years ago before spreading to most of the rest of the world.
Yogurt cheese: is a simple product
that you can make at home from regular store bought yogurt (buy the non-stabilized,
non-homogenized product, or much better yet, make your own home-made yogurt.)
Take regular yogurt and put it into a muslin or a multi-layer cheese cloth
bag and hang it in the refrigerator over an empty bowl for about 24>48
hours. After about half of the volume (as watery whey) drains out of the
bag … what you have left is yogurt cheese, a very good (and low
fat) substitute for cream cheese.
Fromage frais: is a creamy soft
(curdled, but not curded) cheese made with fermented whole or skimmed
milk and cream. It has the consistency of room-temperature cream cheese,
but with more texture, fewer calories and less cholesterol.
Fromage blanc: is thinner than
Fromage frais and has the consistency of sour cream. It comes in three
fat levels — 40%, 20%, and 0%. The two versions with fat can be
added to hot liquids to make a sauce that will not curdle. Fromage blanc
can be whipped with an immersion blender for increased volume. Low-fat cream cheese is an acceptable substitute for fromage blanc.
Buttermilk: used to be the liquid
left over when soured cream was churned into butter. Nowadays, it’s
another commercially made DairyCorp Mega-Factory product, in which bacteria
is introduced into lowfat milk, causing it to thicken and producing a
tangy flavor. The really cheap stuff doesn’t even use real bacteria.
They just add assorted chemicals and toxic waste products to the milk
until one of their lab-rats says “hmmm…. tastes like buttermilk
to me!”, and into the carton it goes.
Pasteurized processed cheese food product: (your first hint that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong! –
anything at the grocery store whose name ends with the words “food
product” probably has very little to do with the rest of the words
in the name!) Some natural cheese, unfortunately, is vandalized and converted
into processed cheese, a very unnatural product in which complete ripening is halted by heat and the
natural structure of the cheese is obliterated. The resulting industrial
product has an indefinite shelf life, and the nutritional and textural
qualities of silly-putty. Most process cheese is used in food service
outlets and other applications where convenient, pre-portioned “yellow
slices” or uniform melting “yellow runny stuff” is required.
(It is often rumored that the “nacho cheese sauce” found at
ball parks contains NO ingredients whatsoever, that ever came from a cow – except maybe some gelatin made from their hoofs!)
Pasteurized process cheese (those little square, disturbingly yellow,
slices of rubbery plastic stuff that the McBiggie joint puts on its cheeseburgers.)
is made by grinding, heating, and blending processed cheese with other
ingredients, such as water, coloring dyes, emulsifiers, stabilizers, plasticizers, viscosity modifiers, extenders, preservatives,
and lots of yummy chemicals ending in the letters “ite”, “ose”,
or “ate”, and sometimes even “extra calcium for strong,
healthy bones”. The mixture is then heated to temperatures above
165° F to kill it (a merciful act), and then stirred into a homogeneous,
plastic mass and extruded through a nozzle into thin sheets. Process cheese “foods”, “spreads”,
and “products” differ from regular process cheese in that
they may also contain, in addition to the above mentioned petroleum industry
by-products, additional ingredients never found in real cheese, such as
nonfat dry milk, a special form of wood cellulose, corn syrup solids,
soy protein, cheese whey, and whey protein concentrates, as well as additional
amounts of water and/or sewage effluent. Wanna watch Chef Porter go ballistic?
Just ask him if he can provide some Velveeta or Cheese-Whiz on the “Cheese
Experience” plate! But, I digress …. … …back to
crème fraîche.
If you really have a yearning to make your own
crème fraîche, it is relatively easy to do. I will help you!
Recipe #1
After you milk the cow(s), skim off the little dark “flecks”
(we will discuss this later … in private) from the surface of the
milk in the bucket and discard them. Set the bucket aside for an hour
or so to let the cream rise. Then ladle out the fresh cream into a clean
glazed crock. Take the crock down to the spring-house, set it down into
the cool water, and let the natural lactic bacteria take over - creating
a thick, smooth, tart (and authentic) crème fraîche. PS –
you may slurp it with a spoon while no one is looking if you want to!
However, do not try to sell, barter, or even give away this wonderful
product. It has been declared to be in violation of the “Agribiz
MegaSani Taste Removal Act” of 1976, and it is a felony to even
think about sharing this natural product with anyone!
Recipe #2
In a non-reactive container (glass or stainless), stir together
• 3 parts heavy cream
• 1 part plain “live-culture” yogurt.
Mix well, cover, and put someplace warm – at about 110 deg F –
not over 118 deg F. Let it sit overnight, or at least 12 hours. When it
looks and tastes right, put it in the refrigerator for about 12 hours
to thicken; it will keep for at least a week or two.
Recipe #3
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon buttermilk (the kind with bacteria, not the kind
with industrial waste chemicals)
In a medium saucepan over low heat, warm the cream to 105 degrees F. Remove
from heat and stir in the buttermilk. Transfer cream to a large bowl and
allow the mixture to stand in a warm place, loosely covered with plastic
wrap, until thickened but still pourable. Stir and taste every 6 - 8 hours.
This takes anywhere from 8 to 36 hours. The crème is ready when
it is thick with a slightly nutty sour taste. Chill cream for several
hours before using. Crème fraîche may be stored in the refrigerator
for up to 10 days.
Recipe #4
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Mix heavy cream and lemon juice together in a glass jar. Shake well to
combine. Place jar in an oven or on a stove, using the pilot light as
the heat source, for 8 to 24 hours.
Refrigerate before using.
Recipe #5
Drive yourself and several of your friends over to Tapino, any night Tuesday
through Sunday, and order the “Avocado & Gazpacho parfait with
cilantro crème fraîche”. Add several other small plates,
side-shares, and a nice bottle of wine. Enjoy yourself for 2 hours (sure
beats sitting in the refrigerator for 12 hours to thicken!) and let Chef
Porter worry about how to make the stuff.
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