7 Sour Cream Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Sour cream is one of those fridge staples we might not think about on a daily basis, but when we require its unmistakable tang and creaminess, its absence is inexcusable. Perhaps even more inexcusable is a sour cream that's too watery to give store-bought ketchup a creamy upgrade (or help along any other condiment or dip you're looking to thicken). If it's too subtle to add the proper tang to a bowl of black bean soup, or so overly strong or off-key that it drags the spotlight over to itself in your braised wagyu tacos, well, that's no fun, either. There's a delicate balance that this versatile dairy product has to achieve, and I set out to determine how close seven store-bought brands of it were to hitting the mark.

While you can always make homemade sour cream yourself without much fuss at all, I keep my fridge stocked with the work of the pros for the sake of consistency — I like to know what to expect each time. I've used Daisy sour cream for years and am so accustomed to its specific charms that before I performed this multi-brand taste-and-texture test, I couldn't tell you how it compared to the other brands out there. That's different now. I know exactly where these sour creams sit in relation to each other. Two of them just weren't my cup of cream at all. One was interesting — partly in a good way, but it was ultimately too distinctive to be the multi-tasker I'm looking for. Several were fine to lovely, and the winner inspired a "wow."

I thought Breakstone's All Natural Sour Cream would perform better than this. The brand has been making dairy since the early 1900s (a tad longer than Daisy, actually), so I anticipated a sour cream with either a texture or a flavor indicative of its manufacturer's experience with creamy foods. Alas, this sour cream failed on both counts.

The packaging instructed me to stir before eating, which I did. This increased the thickness a bit, but I could still tell it was going to be thinner than what I want in a sour cream. It's not full-on watery, but it's so far from the rich creaminess of the top brands that the only way to rank it higher would be if its flavor was extraordinary — seeing that it's in last place, you can guess how that turned out.

It's far from bland. A dollop in a bowl of spicy chipotle chili would still make itself known, but the flavor is so tart and weirdly sour-milky (the expiration date was fine) that its dominance wouldn't be a positive thing. Where it might work, if you absolutely had to use it, is a complex dish with a lot of garlic or one of its myriad substitutes that could override the funk, but I wouldn't buy a carton just to experiment with hiding this sour cream's downsides.

I didn't expect much from Walmart's Great Value Sour Cream. There are some awesome Great Value products to buy and others to avoid, but I got scared off from the big box retailer's dairy selection when I ranked the best and worst cottage cheese brands (it was rough; that's all I'll say). But when I popped open the lid to the Great Value Sour Cream, I discovered a nice, moderately thick-looking product. A scoop of this stuff looks like it would stay firmly atop your nachos without immediately melting or dissolving into a puddle. I'd tested several other sour creams by this point, and Great Value's creamy texture was similar to some of the higher-ranking ones.

The flavor is where it went wrong. It's a shapeshifter. It starts off with a nice tang, but it morphs into an overwhelming sourness that leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. If this was all I had, I could use it with a meal that's very richly flavored, like highly seasoned beef tacos or a smoky chipotle chili, where the acidity could cut through the fats and intense spices. I wouldn't let it touch a more delicate dish — it would turn itself into the star of the show.

Publix Sour Cream is the most interesting contender of this bunch. Texture-wise, it's a fairly thick product that would work in a variety of culinary applications. There's an undeniable milky sweetness to it that most likely comes from the inclusion of milk in the ingredients list — there's only 1 gram of sugar, as with the other brands. That's not to say this is dessert-like at all; its dominant note just leans too sweet, while the tanginess required of an all-round sour cream is too restrained.

What makes it so interesting is that it doesn't taste unpleasant at all. If this weren't sour cream but were, instead, some kind of new dairy product you eat straight from the spoon, I'd actually buy it. But this is sour cream, and it needs to be more of a versatile team player in the kitchen. I'd be interested to see how it performs with a strawberry dipped into it, but on nachos or in chili, it would risk adding an element you just don't want. The flavor is in a different league from Breakstone's, though, earning it the higher ranking.

Harris Teeter Sour Cream was a pleasant surprise. I haven't always had great luck with store-brand dairy products (and I'd already been burned by the Great Value contender back in the No. 6 spot), but I kept an open mind. This proved to be a moderately thick sour cream with no unusual sweet notes like Publix's version and no overbearing tartness like Great Value's sour cream. The tang was nice and perfectly passable, though it could have been a little more intense.

The only problem with this sour cream was the beginning of its flavor. It starts with a vaguely sour-milk note that I don't love, but it does back off quickly, leaving that more traditional tanginess. If you weren't deeply focused on your palate like I was (and eating it from a spoon), you may not even notice that wrong note at the start. It would be especially camouflaged in spicy or seasoned dishes, and it might actually play very well with pierogies or something where caramelized onions can mask that initial funk. An onion or chive dip would be another dish to use up a tub of this sour cream, as the punch of the seasonings would hit your tongue first, and the pleasant mid-palate of the dairy would be there waiting for you. Overall, this is more versatile than Publix's sour cream, though it has nothing on the top three in the ranking.

Since Fage produces the best high-protein yogurt in the grocery store, it seemed a given that its sour cream would be amazing. The container even comes with the same parchment paper on the surface as the brand's Greek yogurts. Its function is to soak up liquid from the whey, keeping the dairy inside thick and creamy. That parchment paper must be magic, because Fage Sour Cream is every bit as thick as its Greek yogurt, and it is, by far, the thickest sour cream that I reviewed. If you need sour cream with structural integrity, like if you wanted to make a thick sour cream tzatziki, this would be the contender.

In terms of flavor, the tang is on the more subtle side of acceptable, and it's complemented by a very slight sweetness. In all, the flavor comes across as fresh and pleasant. If it had a bit more tang to it, it could have usurped the product in the No. 2 position.

Whenever I mentioned to people that I was taste-testing sour cream brands, every single one replied to the effect of, "Cool! I use Daisy." If you do, too, you know that Daisy Sour Cream is wonderfully rich and creamy. When eaten from a spoon, it almost feels like a full-fat Greek yogurt. In several ways, including that texture, it's comparable to the No. 3 sour cream, though Fage is actually a bit thicker — unnecessarily so, for most of my culinary needs.

The smooth, tangy flavor of Daisy is that of a simple, high-quality dairy product, and the ingredients list reflects that: it contains only cultured cream, while five of the others list enzymes as the second ingredient (Publix's listed milk, if you recall). That isn't important to me, but if it is to you, Daisy should be your go-to. My only complaint about Daisy is that, like Fage, it's on the more subtle side of tangy. This has never stopped me from buying it before, but I had no idea how much I would notice Daisy's comparable subtleness until I tasted the No. 1 contender.

Meet your No. 1: Aldi Friendly Farms Sour Cream. I learned a lot about what I really need in a sour cream when I compared this private-label brand's efforts to that of the dairy icon in second place position. (If your needs diverge from mine, stick with Daisy.)

The beautiful, perfectly balanced tanginess of Friendly Farms showed me that I do, in fact, want a sour cream that hits a bit harder in that department than Daisy's. The tang in this is unignorable; Daisy's tang could be overlooked in a strongly flavored dish. The key thing, though, is that it's not obnoxious at all, and there's no funky start to it. This sour cream knows what it's doing.

No, this isn't the thickest of the bunch; it's moderately thick — definitely not watery. That means it's a bit easier to scoop out the exact amount you want than with Fage or Daisy, and it would spread more easily if you were making a layered Mexican dip. Overall, all-round versatility, a bold, balanced flavor, and the price tag ($1.79 for 16 ounces) are the winning features of Friendly Farms.

In choosing the sour cream brands for this review and ranking, I went for all the full-fat options available at my four local grocery stores: Walmart, Harris Teeter, Publix, and Aldi. In assessing the brands, the top-performing sour cream should be smooth and creamy, not gritty, grainy, or watery. Its flavor should have a pronounced (though pleasant and balanced) tanginess. Sour creams with a muted flavor, or one that is off-balanced, synthetic, or otherwise off-putting, would be ranked lower. 

I tasted each contender straight from a spoon and noted my initial impressions. Later, I compared different brands side by side to clearly identify their distinguishing features — it was surprising how different seven sour creams could taste.