Taking the fat out of sour cream

Stabilizer that blends hydrocolloids, emulsifiers and modified starches can reduce costs, replace the butter fat and its mouthfeel in sour cream

A few years ago, a customer asked for help from Cargill in lowering the cost and improving the nutrition of sour cream used in their customer’s restaurants. Today, the low-fat sour cream is being enjoyed by customers in 5,800 quick-serve restaurants across the United States, helping a customer when costs matter more than ever.

Cargill worked with a dairy customer to develop the new product. Our customer has an open relationship with their end customer, so the restaurant’s marketing managers and chefs were involved in every step of the approval process.

Lowering costs by reducing butter fat was the key driver for the project. Butter fat costs are volatile and can command a premium.

Robert Loesel, the Dairy Technical Leader at Cargill, began the process of developing an ingredient to replace the butter fat and build back the mouthfeel properties. The Cargill technical team began experimenting with a blend of hydrocolloids, emulsifiers and modified starches to provide creaminess and stability. In the end, they succeeded in developing an ingredient system that cut the fat in half but maintained the same texture and full flavor of high-fat sour cream.

Some of the challenges faced by the technical team in reducing butter fat in sour cream included:

• Minimized acid masking capacity; Oil coats the tongue to deliver latent acid profile
• Flavor flash – flavor doesn’t linger as long; Oil coats the tongue to prolong flavor
• Duller color; oil refracts light

CitriTex® ASA & ASD are functional stabilizing blends used to replace high priced, volatile butter fat, reduce total fat and reduce dairy solids without jeopardizing taste and texture of full fat sour cream or dips.

 “Our new system has allowed our customer to both reduce fat and costs significantly,” Loesel said. “Costs for their end customer also went down.”

Loesel sees more of these kinds of projects ahead as customers look to cut costs and reduce fats. “In today’s economy, reducing costs for existing products is top-of-mind for us and for our customers,” he said. The expense of developing and introducing new products is prompting many food customers to focus on improving or extending existing product lines. Cargill is there to help with its expertise on ingredient replacement systems.