Parvenoff?

November 29, 2006 8:19 AM

What non-dairy "sour cream" works best in a cooked sauce? In particular, how would you make beef stroganoff without using any dairy products?

"Hamburger stroganoff" is a favorite comfort dish of my childhood. My wife doesn't eat milk and meat together, which makes this dish (ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, and sour cream) pretty impossible. But I just found a promising-looking non-dairy "cream" of mushroom soup (Imagine brand) and thought I'd give it a try. The sour cream seems a problem, though. I bought a container of Tofutti Sour Supreme, but to tell the truth it looks both unpleasant and unhealthy. Googling suggests lots of vegan sour cream substitutes (mostly involving sticking silken tofu in the food processor), but it's not clear to me which, if any, will melt into a meat sauce and make it "creamy." Help me, non-dairy MeFites!

P.S. One acceptable answer is "non-dairy stroganoff is a horrible idea, you should use real sour cream and fake meat crumble instead."

posted by escabeche to Food & Drink (19 answers total)

Hi.

Non-dairy stroganoff is a horrible idea, you should use real sour cream and fake meat crumble instead.

The fake meat crumble things are much closer in taste/texture to the real thing (my vegetarian girlfriend won't eat those products - they're too "meaty" for her) than fake sour cream things are to their real thing.

Oddly, now I'm hungry...
posted by rtha at 8:27 AM on November 29, 2006

As someone who abhors dubious substitution, fake food, and soy imitation products, I've cooked with IMO and been pleasantly surprised how palatable the results were.

Due to some childhood scarring, I don't like stroganoff, so I can't tell you how well it works for that. However I've had extended periods where I've used IMO and it cooked almost identically to real sour cream.
posted by majick at 8:33 AM on November 29, 2006

I have made stroganoff with fake ground beef, and it was really darn good. I think you should go that route.
posted by amro at 8:34 AM on November 29, 2006

By the way, are you sure your wife is okay with "fake" meat or "fake" sour cream? I ask because I seem to recall that some Kosher Jews (and based on your tags, I assume that's the issue) won't eat foods that have the appearance of being non-Kosher. IIRC, that was an issue for my dad when he was debating buying turkey bacon years ago.
posted by amro at 8:39 AM on November 29, 2006

you realize of course, that it ALL comes from cows, right? How can it be wrong to eat both parts at once?

Anyway. Fake sour cream is hideous. You're better of with some sort of fake meat.
posted by jaded at 8:59 AM on November 29, 2006

Best answer: I'd try real beef in a gravy made from roux thinned with broth and a whole lot of good mushrooms instead. No dairy, plenty creamy.
posted by sacre_bleu at 9:10 AM on November 29, 2006

I've made real meat/fake dairy dishes before (a lasagne and also a moussaka, not too dissimilar from stroganoff), and they actually tasted pretty good. Here's what I use as a substitute:

- Plain, unsweetened soy yogurt
- Some soft, fresh white bread
- Crushed garlic to taste
- Salt to taste
- Chopped parsley to taste
- (maybe) a few drops of lemon juice
- (maybe) a little white pepper

I mix these up in a food processor until they have the right consistency and taste ok.

I like soy yogurt more than most other fake dairy products, and bread works nicely as a thickener in cooked sauce. Adding a little extra spice (garlic, parsley) helps to cover the soy taste.

Obviously, this is not going to taste the same as your childhood comfort food -- but it should taste good.

Let us know what you use, and how it turns out ...
posted by ourobouros at 9:15 AM on November 29, 2006

jaded - BE YE SEPERATE
posted by junkbox at 9:31 AM on November 29, 2006

Best answer: I'm not a vegan, but I beleive the sour cream substitute that I felt most impressed by was Sour Supreme by Tofutti. It was as good as the real thing, I kid you not. I would just advise you to maybe not cook it very much, just adding the meat and seasonings to it enough to heat it.

And, haters, the fake meat and dairy industries have made tremendous strides in the past year or two. I never would have believed it, but I can rock a vegetarian biscuits and gravy now.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 9:48 AM on November 29, 2006

Is there any way that people can post recipes? I'd love to make the veggie stroganoff and the veggie biscuits and gravy. I know this is a derail, but pretty please?
posted by Sara Anne at 9:57 AM on November 29, 2006

I've never made beef stroganoff, but I'll second the recommendation for Sour Supreme by Tofutti.
posted by hydrophonic at 10:09 AM on November 29, 2006

Sara Anne: I'm sorry to say I don't follow or write down recipes, but for the vegetarian country gravy, i's fairly simple. Make a tan roux. In a separate pan, put some butter, a ton of black pepper, white pepper, anise seed if you choose, red pepper flakes if you choose, and Jimmy Lean (The kind that comes in the sausage-shaped plastic tube). Get it crispy brown, add it to the roux and add cream or fatty milk to your chosen consistency.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:24 AM on November 29, 2006

I use tofu sour cream all the time and it's delicious, especially for creamed spinach. Tofutti's Sour Supreme is completely dairy-free.
posted by np312 at 10:26 AM on November 29, 2006

i've never made vegan stroganoff, though i've been eyeing this recipe from vegweb. some of the other stroganoff recipes looked a little too hippe to taste good.

oh, and as far as fake-dairy stuff goes, tofutti is the best for sour cream and cream cheese. everything else is chunky, off colour, and not tasty. i wouldn't make anybody, especially a non-vegan who regularly eats dairy (and remembers how it tastes) to try it.
posted by kendrak at 11:09 AM on November 29, 2006

I would lean toward soft silken tofu -- just blend it up with a little vinegar, a little lemon juice, a little sugar and a little flour. I don't mind Tofutti-type products but they're kind of void of nutritional value so if I can sneak some tofu in there instead I personally prefer that.

Now I'm starving.
posted by loiseau at 11:35 AM on November 29, 2006

Another vote for "don't use fake dairy - use fake meat instead" - for two reasons: 1) fake dairy doesn't heat/melt well; and 2) I have not liked most dairy substitutes I have tried. They just don't even come close to dairy, and they have weird "off" flavors. However, I've found many meat substitutes that taste fine and work well in recipes - and in fact I can't even eat some of them because they taste, feel, and smell too much like meat.

I have made stroganoff with fake meat (Yves Veggie Ground Round) and it turned out excellent. It won't be quite the same because the fake meat doesn't throw off grease. I sauteed a lot of mushrooms (plain white and portobello) to throw in the cream sauce and they were delicious - added a nice rich flavor.
posted by Melinika at 11:44 AM on November 29, 2006

Best answer: I'll just chime in since I cook a potato platter for a large group of omnivores every holiday that calls for sour cream. As others have mentioned, tofutti's sour cream is as great as everyone has made it out to be and it makes the perfect substitution. I still get just as many complements since I switched it to dairy free and there are only a couple of people that actually know it. It has no problems with being heated up or cooked with and is one of my favorite "fakes". I have attempted to make my own sour creams for various things, but tofutti's is by far and away the best.

Note: The sour cream supreme in the white container has hydrogenated oil in it while the one in the blue and white container does not.
posted by chrisroberts at 2:06 PM on November 29, 2006

I would go the fake meat-real dairy route; fake ground beef is quite good. IME it absorbs more liquid than the real thing so you might add some extra dairy/fat to a recipe to be sure it's not too dry.

Just two more thoughts on possible dairy-subs:

Vegennaise works fantastically for potato salad and other cold-prep applications but I imagine it would change too much when cooked with heat, so probably not good for this application.

In a pinch, potatoes thoroughly boiled and pureed can give a creamy texture to dishes. (I haven't stroganoffed, myself, so I don't know how this sub would work in your specific application).
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:15 PM on November 29, 2006

Response by poster: Hi everybody; thanks for the great answers!

Here's what I did. Following sacre_bleu, I started with a roux; this had the effect of thickening the soy-of-mushroom soup considerably, and gave me a nice dark brown meatsauce. The consistency was fine, but it still didn't have that sour-cream tang, so I added about a tablespoon of the Tofutti to each plate (on Ambrosia Voyeur's suggestion, I didn't want to cook the stuff.) And damned if it doesn't taste just like sour cream! Or close enough to fool you, mixed into a rich sauce with lots of other stuff in it. Maybe the mouth feel was a little greasier, but other than that it was absolutely satisfactory. Next time I'll see if I can find the non-hydrogenated version.

Thanks, Metafilter, for helping me reconcile nostalgia and kashrut!
posted by escabeche at 8:49 PM on November 29, 2006