This creamy sour cream sauce is packed with fresh chives! Easy to make ahead of time and perfect for drizzling over pierogi, potatoes, veggies, enchiladas, and more.
I always serve this sour cream and chive sauce with homemade pierogi at holidays, but over the years it's also become my go-to for everything from twice baked potatoes to pasta to roasted veggies. Plenty of sour cream gives this sauce a rich, tangy flavor that's perfect for adding brightness and elegance to your favorite dishes.
One important note: This is a warm sauce that's really meant for drizzling, kind of like a sour cream gravy. Use it to dress up and enhance the recipes you already love (we'll share plenty of serving ideas later on in this post!)
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Ingredients
Scroll to the recipe card below for a full ingredients list with exact quantities.
This sauce is pretty straightforward, but we want to highlight a few things before you jump in:
- Sour Cream is the star of the show, and there's a lot of it. As written, this recipe makes a fairly rich sauce: feel free to adjust the amount of sour cream to suit your own tastes!
- We'll sauté two smashed, peeled garlic cloves in butter, then remove them before stirring the sauce together. This gives us a hint of garlic, which balances the sauce without overpowering other flavors or adding extra texture. (We use this same technique in our creamy cilantro pasta!)
- Chicken broth thins our sauce so it's drizzle-able and balances out the sour cream flavor. Swap it for veggie broth or parmesan broth if you prefer (although in our testing, we liked chicken broth the best).
- Fresh chives are essential here: They lend color, brightness, and complexity to this sauce. Stir most of the chopped chives right into the sauce; save the rest to use as a garnish later on.
Variations and Substitutions
- Swap the chives for fresh parsley, dill, tarragon, or a mix of your favorite fresh herbs.
- Skip the fresh garlic and use ¼ teaspoon of garlic powder in its place. You can also add a bit of onion powder to this sauce if you want more of a "sour cream and onion" vibe!
- Mince your garlic and leave it in the sauce instead of removing it (like we do in our white sauce for pasta). You may want to reduce the amount of garlic if you go this route, since the end flavor will be stronger.
- Use Greek yogurt or crème fraîche instead of sour cream if you like. (Some Greek yogurt brands tend to separate in this sauce: If that happens, just zap it with an immersion blender to smooth it back out!)
- For a thicker sauce, reduce the amount of chicken broth and/or let the sauce simmer an extra few minutes. For a thinner sauce, add extra chicken broth.
Step by Step Instructions
Start by melting a bit of butter in a small saucepan (Image 1, below), then sauté some lightly smashed garlic cloves until they're soft and fragrant (Image 2).
Use a slotted spoon to remove the garlic cloves from the pot; discard or compost them (Image 3, above). Whisk in a bit of flour (4) to form a roux, and let that cook for a minute or so, until the flour is toasty and fragrant.
Why remove the garlic? We want just enough garlic flavor to add some depth and balance. If we leave the garlic in the sauce, it adds extra texture and competes with the sour cream a little too much. That said, the "right" amount of garlic is subjective: use more or less of it to suit your palate! You can also absolutely mince the garlic and leave it in the sauce if you prefer (like we do in our simple white sauce).
Slowly whisk chicken broth into the roux (Image 5, above), and let it thicken for a few minutes. Stir in the sour cream along with a bit of salt and pepper (6).
Bring the sauce to a low simmer until it reaches your desired thickness (7), then stir in the chopped chives (8).
What to Serve with Sour Cream Sauce
This sauce is an excellent accompaniment for all kinds of recipes. Some of our favorite ways to serve it:
- Drizzle this sauce over the top of homemade pierogies, or serve it on the side for dipping!
- Enchiladas. Sour cream sauce is excellent drizzled over some classic chicken enchiladas or chicken mole enchiladas!
- Potatoes. Serve this sauce just like a gravy over your favorite mashed potatoes (we love it with greek yogurt mashed potatoes or our ultimate mashed potatoes), or drizzle it over some crispy hasselback potatoes or a warm potato salad for a cozy side dish.
- Serve with protein. Drizzle this sauce over some grilled or roasted chicken, salmon, or steak.
- Toss some cooked pasta with this sauce for an easy, delicious dinner! We recommend adding some veggies (like broccoli or sautéed mushrooms - similar to a quick mushroom stroganoff!) or protein to balance out the sour cream, since it can be a bit overpowering on its own. You may also want to thin the sauce out with some reserved pasta water for best results!
- Warm, soft pretzels are fabulous with this sauce. Serve it as an easy dip in a small bowl alongside some mustard or a bit of apple beer cheese soup.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sour cream gives sauces a rich, silky texture and a ton of tart, punchy flavor. You can also add sour cream to other soup and sauce recipes: try adding a spoonful to things like butternut squash and pear soup, beer cheese soup, or easy mushroom sauce for a bit of brightness and tang.
Yes: There are many different varieties of sour cream! For this recipe, we recommend looking for plain sour cream (as opposed to flavored sour cream or store-bought sour cream dips in flavors like dill or french onion).
We tested this recipe with several brands, including: Wegmans Sour Cream, Wegmans Light Sour Cream, and Tillamook Cultured Sour Cream. Different brands of sour cream have different flavors: Tillamook, for example, was a bit thicker and more sour than some of the other brands we tested with. You may find you need to adjust the amount of sour cream in this recipe depending on what brand you use!
Zap it with an immersion blender to smooth it back out! In our testing, this sauce rarely separated (but certain brands - especially low fat brands or Greek Yogurt brands - were more prone to this issue).
While this sauce is delicious, we wouldn't necessarily qualify it as a "dip." Because it's warm and on the thinner side, it works best as a drizzle or light sauce on other warm dishes. If you want something thicker and more spreadable with a knife (like a thick sour cream dip recipe to serve with snacks such as tortilla chips, celery and carrots, or potato wedges on game day), you might want to use a cold, thicker chive dip recipe or something like this caramelized onion dip instead.
Yes! Let sauce cool completely and store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. When you're ready to use it, reheat it in a skillet or saucepan over low heat (you may need to add an extra splash of chicken broth to bring it back to a silky consistency!)
If you're planning to make this sauce ahead of time, we recommend leaving the chives OUT of the sauce when you do the initial meal prep: Wait to stir the chives in until right when you're ready to serve! This will keep the herbs feeling bright, crisp, and fresh.
More Easy Sauce Recipes
Did you make this recipe? Leave a comment and star rating below to let us know how it turned out!
📖 Recipe
Sour Cream and Chive Sauce
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 1 ⅔ cups 1x
- Category: Sauce
- Cuisine: American
Description
This easy sour cream sauce is perfect for serving with homemade Pierogi!
Ingredients
- 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
- 2 cloves garlic, lightly smashed and peeled (see recipe notes)
- 1 Tablespoon all purpose flour
- ⅔ cup chicken broth
- 8 ounces sour cream (about 1 cup)
- ¼ cup fresh chopped chives, plus extra for garnish
- kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add smashed garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2-3 minutes until garlic is soft and fragrant. Use a slotted spoon to remove garlic; discard or compost the cloves.
- Whisk flour into butter to form a roux. Cook for 30 seconds until fragrant.
- Slowly stream in chicken broth, whisking constantly to work out any lumps of flour. Bring sauce to a low simmer and let it thicken, about 3 minutes.
- Add sour cream, salt, and pepper and stir to combine. Cook another 2-3 minutes until sauce has thickened slightly, then stir in chives. Garnish with extra chives and a few turns of cracked black pepper; serve immediately.
Notes
Prep the garlic by lightly smashing each clove with the flat side of a chef's knife. Remove the skins, but leave the cloves whole (it's ok if they fall apart a little: leaving them mostly intact just makes it easier to remove them from the butter later!) This gives us a light garlic flavor and provides a bit of depth to the sauce without adding unnecessary texture.
Every sour cream brand is different! Adjust the amount of sour cream or chicken broth in this recipe to achieve your ideal flavor and consistency. If you're using a sour cream that's especially thick or sour (like Tillamook), you may want to decrease the amount of sour cream or add a bit of extra chicken broth.
Additions and Substitutions. Use vegetable broth or parmesan broth in place of chicken broth here. Use Greek yogurt or crème fraîche instead of sour cream. Mince the garlic and leave it in the sauce instead of using whole garlic cloves, or use ¼ teaspoon garlic powder in place of the garlic cloves. Add a pinch of onion powder if you like.
If the sauce separates, use an immersion blender to smooth it out before adding the chives. (Certain brands of Greek yogurt and low-fat sour cream are more prone to separating in this sauce recipe.)
Remember: This is a sauce, not a dip! This warm, drizzle-able sauce is best served as an accompaniment to other dishes. If you're looking for a thick, scoopable dip, we recommend trying something like a cold chive dip or caramelized onion dip instead!
Serving suggestions. Drizzle this sauce over potato and cheese pierogis, enchiladas, protein (salmon, chicken, steak), pasta, potatoes (mashed potatoes, hasselback potatoes, twice baked potatoes), and more!
Loosely adapted from My Gourmet Connection.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 3 Tablespoons
- Calories: 71
- Sugar: 0.2 g
- Sodium: 97.3 mg
- Fat: 5.5 g
- Carbohydrates: 3.2 g
- Protein: 2.3 g
- Cholesterol: 14.2 mg
Keywords: sauce, thanksgiving, side dish
This recipe was originally published in 2012. It was updated in 2023 with additional photos and a few tweaks: We dialed up the sour cream and adjusted a few of the instructions to streamline the recipe process and make this sauce even easier and more delicious!
Sha'Nissi Ayedzi
The sauce is delicious. One serving is enough to cover just about 20 Perogies.
★★★★★
Team Life As A Strawberry
We're SO happy to hear you loved it!
Sunshine
Is there a functional reason not to use butter for the roux? It's just that I try to keep kosher, and this is already a dairy meal, so I don't see the point in using olive oil for the roux when it's easier to get butter to cooperate with that process anyway.
Jessie
You can definitely use butter!
Julie Jaynes
I need to make this lemon chive sauce but need the amounts converted to add to one pound of sour cream. Please help I need by 12/2
Jessie
There's an online recipe converter here that might help!