Last Tuesday I gave you the link to a list of common kitchen and pantry substitutions. I’ve used the lemon juice in milk substitution for sour cream in a recipe without any problems. I’ll be using that much more often instead of purchasing sour cream. While that’s a great savings, I really wanted to figure out a substitution for sour cream as a topping. Here’s what I came up with:
Soften 5 oz. cream cheese in the microwave on low power.
Add 3 ounces of whole milk and wisk well (I’m sure a blender would work better but we don’t have one)
Add 1 tsp lemon juice, cover and let sit on the counter for about 30 minutes.
Wisk in 1/2 TBS corn starch at a time until you reach the desired consistency. (I used 2 TBS)
Mine isn’t as smooth as store bought sour cream or quite as thick, but it works and tastes good! It will certainly do in a pinch.
Keep in mind that this is not necessarily cheaper than buying sour cream at the store. When I made my original batch my cream cheese was $.88. So I used $.55 worth of cream cheese, $.08 for the corn starch, $.03 for the milk and $.01 for the lemon juice. $.67 for 8 oz is a decent price (it’s better than the regular price even at Walmart) but that’s dependent on getting the cream cheese that cheap. Even if you pay 2x as much for the ingredients it will still be cheaper than rushing out to the store just to buy sour cream if you need it at the last minute. (the true cost of mileage is around $.45-not to mention your time) When it comes right down to it, finding a substitution to keep me from rushing to the store at the last minute was the purpose for my experimenting after all, and I think I succeeded. 
very interesting – thanks!
very interesting – thanks!