Easy Homemade Cream Cheese, Plain or with Dill and Onion

I’ve been making my own cream cheese for a very long time but fell out of the habit until I went to visit my son Dani and DIL Racheli. They love the taste and have been doing this for years, so it got me back in the mood. Lemme tell you, there’s nothing to compare to the smooth and silky taste and texture of the homemade cream cheese compared to the bought kind.

And it’s so easy! I’m not talking about boiling cream and what have you, you use sour cream for this and I will show you step by step but if you have a Melitta coffee dripper, it’s even simpler to do. If not, you can use a sieve or colander and line with a few sheets of paper towel.

Start with good sour cream. The less fat content, the less smooth. You can mix low fat with one higher fat and get pretty good results. So, I started with 6 containers (they come in small amounts of approximately a cup here).

Plunk all the containers into a bowl (or if you have a large container, measure out 6 3/4 cups). Stir in the salt.

A note. If you taste it with the salt, it may taste a bit too salty. Once, however, it turns into cream cheese, it’ll be just right. If you are afraid, cut the salt by a bit, not more. After you stir in the salt, you can separate your mixture into two if you wish, as I did. One I left plain and the other dill and onion. One more mention. You will note that there is some liquid (whey) in with the sour cream. Don’t fret, it will drip out, so no need to bother about it. So I took the half I wanted plain and put into two Melitta holders with coffee filters in it.

You will immediately see small drops falling into the cups. That’s as it should be. Now take the rest of the mixture in the bowl and add minced onion (fresh or dried, as you please) and finely chopped fresh or frozen dill. They both work, the fresh of course is stronger in flavor. Since I like my oniony taste mild, I prefer the dried minced onion but if you can get fresh dill, all the better. I only had frozen to hand and it works beautifully as well.

Mix till all is incorporated and smooth. Now put into your filter or colander with paper towels. Once all your filters/colanders are set up, cover the tops with tin foil or plastic wrap and pop into the fridge to drip merrily overnight. The cream cheese sort of turns into a compact ball like shape and is smooth, creamy and spreadable. It is also a much smaller quantity than you start with after all the liquid drips out, so although this may seem like a lot, it’s less in the end. I press it into containers with lids, and that’s all folks! Enjoy 🙂 .

Easy Homemade Cream Cheese, Plain or with Dill and Onion

6 containers of sour cream of 200 m”l or approximately 6 3/4 cups of sour cream
2 flat teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons fresh or frozen chopped dill
1 tablespoon minced dried onion or 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh minced onion
Either a colander/sieve lined with paper towels (two if you want both plain and dill) OR
Melitta holders with coffee paper liners (see pics above)

Directions:

Take all the sour cream and put in a large bowl. Add the salt and mix thoroughly. Don’t worry if there’s liquid in there, it’ll drip out. Now if you want both plain and dill cream cheese, take half the mixture and put into your drippers as is, for plain. To the rest of the mixture in the bowl, add the minced onion and chopped dill and mix thoroughly until combined. Now place it in a separate dripper. Cover the tops with tin foil or plastic wrap and pop into fridge to drip overnight. The cream cheese will appear magically before your eyes in the morning, just in time to spread on toast. I press mine into containers with snap lids. Delightful, smooth and creamy.