For many of us who love dairy foods but have a problem digesting lactose, having lactose-free milk available was a gift from heaven. Goat’s milk cheeses, which are becoming more easily available, help fill the cheese-need.  I also like sour cream and yogurt but finding those in lactose-free forms is a challenge.  One local grocery has introduced lactose-free sour cream, but it’s not always available when I need it, and it tends to be expensive.  I know that it’s pretty easy to make home-made yogurt, so I started there.  Then I applied the same technique to sour cream and guess what – it worked!  I now have lactose-safe yogurt and sour cream to use in cooking, dressings, desserts, condiments and sides.  The only difference I noticed is with the sour cream – it has a consistency more like clotted cream or creme fraiche but the taste is still all sour cream. I have not experimented yet with adding tapioca or other stabilizers to make a ‘thicker’ texture more like the commercial products, and I’m not sure I want to do that.  If I do, though, I’ll update this recipe to share that as well.

Check out the recipe and method under Condiments, Sauces and Sides.

You now have lactose-free yogurt and/or sour cream that you can use just as you would regular products.  Both will be a softer consistency than the store products because these do not have thickeners or stabilizers added to them.  If you start out with regular (with lactose) starters, then these will be lactose-reduced but not lactose-free. As you use these products to make more batches, you will continue to reduce the lactose in the end product until it is essentially lactose-free. Note that these won’t keep as long as commercial products because they don’t have extra preservatives in them, but when you can make it so easily that shouldn’t be a problem!

Please try this out and let me know how it goes and how you like the ‘homemade’ results!