Make Your Own Cream Cheese

Yes, its possible to make your own cream cheese! And want to know what? Its SO EASY!!! Don't start getting all impressed or anything...you'll laugh that you never figured out how to do it before. I did! I've lived in China for 5 years and this was the first time making it for me. I've actually researched making cream cheese many times. Almost every "recipe" or suggestion involved simply straining plain yogurt through a cheese cloth for 4-24 hours to make it thicker (just like the process for ricotta cheese). This works great to make yogurt good and thick, but it still tastes sour like yogurt! So I never really considered this as a good cream cheese substitute--though it looks and tastes a lot like sour cream!! But recently I ran across a process for cream cheese that looked totally doable. I've made it a couple times now and tried it in 3 or 4 different types of recipes and it is a REALLY great substitute option if you can't get cream cheese. This is more of a process than a true recipe, so let me talk you through it...

Place milk and salt in saucepan over medium-low heat. Scald milk, which just means bring it almost to a boil.  It'll be a bit frothy and bubbly, but not a rolling boil. Turn off heat. Stir in white vinegar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until milk separates. Let stand until cool--an hour or two.

Cover a bowl or line a strainer with a relatively porous cloth (there are things stores in the States sell as "cheese cloth" but I just use whatever I can find locally--washcloths, towels, linen or muslin material). Pour your separated milk into the cloth. Let strain for an hour at least--several hours won't hurt it either. What you have left on top of the cloth is ricotta cheese. If you wanted just the ricotta, stop here. You could use this for lasagna, to top a pizza or stuff in a calzone. Its especially good if you shake in some salt and Italian seasoning to flavor it a bit! But, that's if you want ricotta cheese. There is just one more step for cream cheese!

Next, place the ricotta cheese in a food processor or blender (I had to use the food processor attachment to get it to work well--the blender had too small of a blade to pull the cheese down without adding liquid, which you don't want to do). What you will have is something that tastes very similar to cream cheese. Texture wise, I feel it is a little softer, more like a low-fat cream cheese. That's it! I told you it was easy, right??

Here is what I found proportion wise:

To yield about 16 oz of cream cheese (2 blocks):
2 - 2 1/2 liters of milk
1 1/2 tsp salt
<1/4 cup vinegar

My review of this:
I will share some recipes I tried this in soon...one was just an herbed cream cheese dip/spread, which worked GREAT. I also tried it in a taquito/flauta recipe that I'll share soon--worked great in that, too. Finally, I tried it in everyone's favorite Creamy Chicken & Vegetable Pasta. A few thoughts on it...if you don't have cream cheese available to you, then use it! We'd give the recipe a 7 or 8/10 with the substitute. Its just a little off. When you cook it, you can smell the vinegar (which my husband was turned off by!), but you can't taste it. I thought the sauce needed a little extra salt and pepper with the homemade cream cheese. And the big thing was that it lost its creaminess really fast as it cooled--but I added milk when I reheated the leftovers (which I do even when I reheat it made with real cream cheese) which helped. Again, it is totally passable, but might be worth getting real cream cheese for that sauce if you had it available. I still have things I want to try this in, but so far I'm liking it as an option!! I think one of the biggest potentials it has is with different mix-ins/flavors for spreading on toasts, sandwiches, bagels and such. I have not tried this in any desserts...not sure what it would do...let us know in the comments if you try something!!

Cost comparison wise, this comes out only as expensive per 8oz as a little more than you pay for a liter of milk. So its bound to be cheaper than buying cream cheese. And while you need to start this in the morning if you want it for dinner, there is very little hands-on time--max about 10-15 minutes at 3 different points.

I hope this is a helpful recipe for some of you that live in smaller cities or more remote places!!