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Sometimes a bit of sweetness is all you need to take an otherwise savory dish to the next level. It could be fried chicken and waffles, or apple grilled cheese, but as long as there's a balance of sweet and savory, you can't go wrong with the combination. The same goes for sweet potato casserole. If you accidentally add too much brown sugar or to too many marshmallows, you can easily end up with a sweet potato pie instead. Your first instinct might be to double your recipe and skip the sugar the second time around, but if you don't have any extra ingredients, there's actually a much easier way to go about it. According to Eating Well, all you need to do is to counter the sweetness with tanginess, and mixing in either buttermilk or sour cream is the best way to accomplish this. When you do this, the natural tangy flavor is able to tone down the sweetness without adding any saltiness in the process. Here's how it's done.
How much sour cream or buttermilk should you add to sweet potato casserole
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To determine how much sour cream or buttermilk you need in order to fix your sweet potato casserole, it really depends on how sweet it was to begin with, so you'll just have to taste as you go. One recipe from The Kitchn, however, provides a solid frame of reference. It uses three to four pounds of sweet potatoes and gets its sweetness with a quarter-cup of light brown sugar and two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. But to tone down that sweetness while keeping the flavor and richness of the sugar and balsamic, it also calls for a quarter-cup of sour cream.
You'll need to adjust this ratio based on your own recipe and the amount of sweet ingredients you've added, but keep in mind the more you add, the creamier and tangier it'll get. If you're still going for that classic sweet potato casserole taste,you don't want the sweetness to get entirely overpowered. Give it a try — and make sure you taste along the way.
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