The Storage Hack That Keeps Sour Cream Fresh For Longer

Sour cream is the perfect topping for many foods, from baked potatoes to burritos. However, one of the biggest downsides of sour cream is how quickly it goes bad in the fridge. If you've ever made the perfect loaded broccoli and cheddar baked potato and then grabbed the sour cream only to find it covered with fuzzy green mold, then you know the frustration. While some sour cream alternatives can be used in situations like this, let's face it — they just don't hit the same as the real deal. Luckily, there is an easy hack for keeping your sour cream fresh longer, and it involves flipping the container over.

Because exposure to bacteria and mold spores that are naturally present in the air causes sour cream to spoil, you can make yours last longer by minimizing its air exposure. One way to do this is to flip the sour cream container over and store it in the fridge upside down. This works because it causes all the sour cream to fall to the bottom, essentially sealing the lid and not allowing any outside air to get inside and develop green fuzzies.

While this hack does work well and can extend the life of sour cream, the one negative of storing sour cream upside down is that the container wasn't designed to be stored that way. This means that you may end up with some of that separated sour cream liquid leeching out and making a mess in the fridge. To prevent this, you can always put a small plate under the container. However, you'll have to be prepared for the lid to be a bit wet when you go to grab the sour cream. A simple swipe with a paper towel when you pick up the container should solve this problem.

Another option to keep your sour cream fresher for longer is to try to freeze it. This is especially useful for people who rarely use sour cream or only use it for cooking and baking. With this method, it is important to know that freezing sour cream will change the consistency, making it runnier. That's why frozen sour cream is best used in soups or baked dishes such as casseroles. 

Another option to keep your sour cream fresher for longer is to opt for purchasing it in a different container. A few sour cream brands, like Daisy, have begun selling sour cream in a squeezable condiment pouch. While at first, it may seem quite weird to squeeze sour cream out of a large packet, the reason for this packaging is ease of use and to help maximize the freshness. In fact, as Daisy explained in a press release, the squeezable sour cream pouches have an "opening valve design [that] further aids in maintaining freshness by keeping air from getting into the package when squeezed."

So, if you are someone who wants to keep sour cream in your fridge at all times but doesn't want to waste money throwing it out, squeezable pouch sour cream might just be the best option. However, while reviews of this newer sour cream container on Amazon are positive when it comes to freshness, some reviewers did complain that when the package is stored how it is meant to be (cap-side-down), it does sometimes leak. So, it seems that even with a squeezable pouch of sour cream, there are benefits to storing it upside down.