https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/sour-cream-substitutes

Recipe By: By Niki Achitoff-Gray By Stacey Mei Yan Fong By Zoe Denenberg By Zoe Denenberg By Anna Hezel By Jesse Szewczyk By Anna Hezel By Emily Farris By Sarah Lohman

Shared By Mickey Mantle

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Best Substitute For Sour Cream - Cashew Sour Cream

Ingredients

Cashew Sour Cream
If you’ve never tried homemade cashew cream, you’re in for a treat. With a smooth, creamy consistency and mild, sweetly nutty flavor, it’s a go-to vegan heavy cream replacement in dips, smoothies, and salad dressings, and works wonders in our favorite vegan mac and cheese recipe. Giving cashew cream a sour cream twist is as simple as dialing back the amount of liquid in the recipe and enhancing the flavor with lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and Dijon mustard.
To begin, soak 1 cup raw cashews in water until soft and rubbery (at least 3 hours with room temperature water, or 30–60 minutes with boiling water). Strain and transfer the nuts to a blender with ¼ cup fresh water to purée. Depending on the strength of your blender, you may need to add more water incrementally, up to an additional ¼ cup, to achieve a smooth consistency.
For a flexible sour cream substitute, we recommend seasoning the cream with a generous pinch of kosher or sea salt and 1 teaspoon each of lemon juice, distilled white vinegar, and Dijon mustard. That said, cashew cream is a great blank canvas.
Depending on your intended use, you can swap the lemon juice for lime, add roasted or raw garlic, or replace the vinegar with a vinegar-based hot sauce.