Use Sour Cream Instead of Butter for a Creamier Salad Dressing

The formula for a good homemade salad dressing is simple: you need some kind of oil, more acid than you think, a sweetener, and some mustard (to emulsify). Add a dash of salt and any other condiments you like for a lovely, harsh vinaigrette.

But sometimes the salad requires something creamier, thicker and more intense. Luckily, you don’t have to completely change the dressing recipe – you just need to replace the butter with sour cream.

The sour cream turns out to be thick, rich and clearly creamy. This is all due to the fat it contains, and fat is the only reason you add oil to your dressing in the first place. Using sour cream instead of butter is just changing the source of the fat and it works great. Unlike heavy cream, sour cream increases viscosity and richness without darkening or tarnishing the rest of the dressing ingredients, while providing a pleasant milky flavor.

I tried this substitution using my vinaigrette pattern and found that the one-to-one substitution worked quite well, although you can reduce the acidity by a tablespoon if you want something even more creamy. I also recommend adding some MSG, because MSG is a natural pair for a creamy dressing in my ranch-crazy mind.

However, under no circumstances should you try this with low-fat or low-fat sour cream (two terrible foods that shouldn’t be there). The whole point is to note the pleasant, fatty properties of sour cream, and the reduced fat content completely misses this point.

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