Smetana substitute

Best substitute

Creme Fraiche

Use the same amount as the smetana you are replacing

Best for borscht and hot soups

Close match

Smetana is doing three things at once: adding fat, adding a gentle sourness, and adding body. Its high fat content is also the reason it can go into hot borscht, stroganoff or a mushroom sauce without splitting, which is where most substitutions fail. Creme fraiche is the closest match and swaps 1:1 with no adjustment at all, since it is essentially the same product with a French accent. Full-fat sour cream works but is leaner and noticeably tangier, so stir two tablespoons of heavy cream into each cup and never let it boil. Full-fat Greek yogurt works cold but needs a teaspoon of cornstarch whisked in and careful tempering before it goes anywhere hot, or it will curdle.

Other smetana substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Full-Fat Sour Cream, With a Cream Boost
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream per cup
The obvious swap and the one most recipes tell you to make, but it is not a like-for-like exchange.
What changes
American sour cream is usually 18 to 20 percent fat and is deliberately cultured to be sharper, so a stroganoff or a mushroom sauce made with it comes out thinner, tangier and less rounded, and it is much more likely to break into grainy curds if the pan is too hot. Whisking two tablespoons of heavy cream into each cup fixes both problems at once, raising the fat and softening the sourness. Then temper it and keep it off the boil.
Best for
any smetana recipe, hot or cold, cold sauces, salads and dips, baking, dolloping
Avoid light or reduced-fat sour cream entirely for hot dishes. At 10 percent fat or less it curdles almost on contact with a simmering pot.
3Homemade Cultured Cream
Close match
Use the same amount
The closest thing to real smetana you can make, and it takes two ingredients.
What changes
Stir two tablespoons of buttermilk, or a tablespoon of live plain yogurt, into a cup of heavy cream, cover it loosely and leave it at warm room temperature, around 75 to 85F, for 8 to 24 hours until it thickens and smells pleasantly sour, then refrigerate it. The fat content matches a rich smetana exactly, so it behaves identically in a hot pan. For a same-day cheat, stir a teaspoon of lemon juice into a cup of heavy cream instead: it thickens and sours immediately but tastes cleaner and flatter, without the cultured complexity.
Best for
hot soups and sauces where curdling matters, cooks who cannot buy either smetana or creme fraiche, baking, matching a specific fat percentage
Use pasteurised cream, not ultra-pasteurised if you can help it, since UHT cream cultures slowly and unreliably and sometimes never thickens at all.
4Mascarpone Thinned With Milk
Different taste
3 parts mascarpone to 1 part milk, then use 1:1
Right on richness and body, wrong on sourness.
What changes
Mascarpone is a very high-fat fresh cream cheese, so once loosened with a little milk it has the thickness and the luxurious mouthfeel of a top-grade smetana and it is completely stable in heat. What it lacks is culture: it tastes sweet and milky rather than tangy, which makes a mushroom sauce or a beef stroganoff taste flat and slightly dessert-like. Stir in a teaspoon of lemon juice per half cup and the balance comes back. It is excellent in baking and on blini, and less convincing in a sour soup.
Best for
baking and cake fillings, blini and pancakes, creamy pan sauces that will not be boiled, sweet applications
Do not add the lemon juice until after you have thinned it, or the mascarpone can seize into a stiff paste.
5Full-Fat Greek Yogurt, Stabilised
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch or flour per cup for hot dishes
Perfectly good cold and risky hot.
What changes
Even the 10 percent versions are leaner than smetana, and the flavour is distinctly yogurt: sharper, more lactic and more acidic, which makes a borscht taste brighter and a sauce taste tangier than intended. Because of the lower fat and higher acidity it curdles readily, so whisk in a teaspoon of cornstarch per cup, then temper it by stirring a ladle of the hot liquid into the yogurt before returning the mixture to the pot off the heat. As a cold dollop on dumplings or in a salad it needs no help at all.
Best for
dolloping on pelmeni, vareniki and blini, cold soups and salads, marinades and dips, lighter versions of creamy dishes
Full-fat, not zero percent. Non-fat Greek yogurt will split in almost any hot dish no matter how carefully you temper it.
6Cashew Cream, for a Dairy-Free Version
Different taste
Use the same amount
The best plant-based option.
What changes
Soak a cup of raw cashews in hot water for 30 minutes, drain, and blend with half a cup of fresh water, a teaspoon of lemon juice and a pinch of salt until completely smooth. It is thick, creamy and rich, and because there is no dairy protein to seize it will not curdle in a hot soup at all, which makes it more forgiving than the yogurt route. It tastes faintly sweet and nutty with none of the cultured tang, so lean harder on the lemon juice, and it is slightly beige, which is visible on a bowl of red borscht.
Best for
dairy-free borscht and soups, vegan stroganoff and mushroom sauces, dolloping, creamy dressings
Blend it longer than you think you need to. Under-blended cashew cream is grainy in a way that reads immediately as a substitute.

What is Smetana?

Smetana is the Eastern European cultured cream used across Russian, Ukrainian and Polish cooking, running anywhere from 15 to 42 percent butterfat and tasting distinctly richer and less sharp than American sour cream, and in a dish it supplies fat, a gentle sourness and body all at once, which is why the high-fat grades can meet a hot pan or a hot soup without splitting.

Cooking tips

The percentage printed on the tub is the whole story. Around 15 to 20 percent smetana is the everyday cooking grade for stirring into soups and sauces, 30 percent and up is for dolloping, baking and anything that meets real heat. If a recipe warns you not to let it boil, it is telling you the fat is doing structural work.
Never boil it, and always temper it. Whisk a ladleful of the hot soup or sauce into the smetana in a separate bowl, then stir that mixture back into the pot with the heat off. Adding cold cultured cream straight into a boiling pot is the single most common cause of a curdled, grainy borscht.
In borscht, solyanka and most Russian and Ukrainian soups, smetana goes into the bowl at the table, not into the pot. That is not just tradition, it also removes any risk of splitting and keeps the sourness fresh and distinct rather than cooked in.
For beef stroganoff, take the pan off the heat entirely before the cream goes in, then return it to the lowest possible flame only long enough to warm through. A stroganoff that has boiled after the smetana went in cannot be brought back.
Lower fat means higher curdling risk, so if all you have is a lean sour cream or a yogurt, whisk in a teaspoon of flour or cornstarch per cup as insurance. The starch physically gets in the way of the proteins clumping.
In baking, smetana's fat counts toward the recipe's fat. If you substitute yogurt, add a tablespoon of oil or melted butter per cup to keep the crumb tender, otherwise cakes and babka come out drier and tighter than intended.

Frequently asked questions

Is smetana just sour cream?

Close, but not the same, and the differences matter in cooking. Smetana is generally higher in fat, often 20 to 30 percent and sometimes as high as 42, and it is cultured to be milder, so it tastes richer and rounder and less sharp than American sour cream, which typically sits near 18 to 20 percent and is deliberately tangy. The practical consequence is that smetana can take heat without splitting where sour cream often cannot.

Is smetana the same as creme fraiche?

Very nearly, and creme fraiche is the substitute to reach for. Both are cultured creams at roughly 30 percent fat with a mild lactic tang, and both are heat-stable. Creme fraiche is a touch nuttier and usually a touch thicker, and smetana comes in a wider range of fat grades. For any recipe, swap them 1:1 without adjustment.

Can I just leave the smetana out?

Rarely without loss. In a soup where it is a garnish, you can skip it and the soup is still the soup, just leaner and sharper, and a swirl of olive oil helps the mouthfeel. In stroganoff, a creamy mushroom sauce or a cake batter, it is supplying fat, acid and liquid all at once, so leaving it out changes the texture completely. Substituting something in the same fat range is much easier than compensating for its absence.

Why did my smetana or sour cream curdle in the soup?

Almost always heat plus low fat. High temperature makes the milk proteins clump, and the less fat there is to get between them, the faster it happens, with acidity making it worse still. Fix it next time by tempering, taking the pot off the boil before adding the cream, using a higher-fat product, and whisking in a teaspoon of starch per cup. A soup that has already split can sometimes be smoothed out with a stick blender, though the texture will stay slightly grainy.

Where can I buy smetana?

Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Baltic grocery stores carry it in several fat grades, usually in tubs marked with a percentage, and some larger supermarkets stock it near the sour cream, sometimes labelled smitana or simply cultured cream. If you cannot find it, creme fraiche is the direct equivalent in any well-stocked dairy aisle, and stirring buttermilk into heavy cream and leaving it overnight gets you there from scratch.

Related substitutes

More dairy substitutes

Smetana substitute

Other smetana substitutes

2Full-Fat Sour Cream, With a Cream Boost

3Homemade Cultured Cream

4Mascarpone Thinned With Milk

5Full-Fat Greek Yogurt, Stabilised

6Cashew Cream, for a Dairy-Free Version