Tried using yogurt instead of sour cream in my potato soup

I was out of sour cream last night and just used plain greek yogurt instead in my creamy potato soup. It gave the soup this weird tangy taste that wasn't quite right and the texture got a little thin after reheating. Has anyone else tried this swap and found a way to make it work better?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_xena11d ago

Oh man, @dixon.iris nailed it with the cheese soup comment because I tried this swap once and ended up with this weird curdled situation that looked like I was serving cottage cheese hot potato soup. I swear yogurt has a personal vendetta against being heated, it always gets all grainy and splits on me no matter how slow I warm it up. Honestly I just keep a backup tub of sour cream in the freezer now because the yogurt shortcut has burned me too many times to risk it again.

dixon.iris12d ago

...and then my husband asked if I accidentally made cheese soup instead of potato soup, which is basically what happened when I tried this exact swap. Look, I love Greek yogurt in theory but in practice it has this mind of its own when you heat it up. The tang you're tasting is the yogurt's natural acidity and it just doesn't mellow out like sour cream does. For the texture issue, I've found that straining the yogurt through a coffee filter or cheesecloth first to get some of the liquid out helps a tiny bit, but honestly I've never gotten it to the same creamy consistency. Your mileage may vary but I've accepted that sour cream is just one of those things you can't really fake in a thick soup without some weird results.