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Are sour cream (from the US) and crema (from Mexico) the same thing? The place I'm at doesn't have sour cream only crema.

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The ingredients in sour cream simply says, "Cultured cream".

The ingredients in crema says, "cow milk's cream 25% fat, citric acid, stabilizers (guar gum, cellulose gum, sodium citrate, carrageenan, mono- and diglycerides, sodium alginate, carob gum, tricalcium phosphate), iodized salt, artificial flavoring, natamicina".

The context is following a recipe calling for sour cream where the closest thing I've found is crema. It has been said they are not the same thing.

Update
I found this article that has been helpful. But the article doesn't say what the ingredients are.

https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/mexican-crema/

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2 Answers2

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I find Mexican crema typically a little sweeter and not as sour or tangy as sour cream. In my experience it is also not as thick as sour cream. How it will work as a substitute probably depends on the specific recipe itself. Consistency could be an issue, but I think it is a reasonable flavor substitute.

moscafj
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They're definitely not the same thing.

If you look at the ingredients, you'll see that the sour cream is, well, sour cream. It's a dairy product (milk cream of a certain fat percentage) that has been fermented.

The crema has not been fermented. Instead, it starts out with cream, and they have added a complex mixture of thickeners to achieve the texture, and some citric acid and flavoring to get the flavor to mimick a cultured product, while not being cultured. You could see it as a substitute for the real thing.

As all highly engineered substitutes, it works as long as it's used in the ways the engineers intended - best straight out of the box. If you try cooking with it, it may or may not work as expected. The taste shouldn't change much no matter what, but the texture may get weird.

It's difficult to predict which cases will work and which won't. Heated recipes are riskier than non-heated ones, but they might still work. Recipes where the result isn't expected to change texture (e.g. if you're making a raita) are more likely to work well, or also recipes where it doesn't matter if the cream suddenly liquefies (e.g. in a pancake batter). But these are really very wild guesses. The only place where you can be sure if it's served as-is, without being mixed with anything or heated. In the end, you have to try each recipe individually and find out if it works or not.

rumtscho
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