Dairy & Eggs
Best Buttermilk Substitutes
Out of Buttermilk? Here are 3 real substitutes, ranked and ratio-backed.
1. Milk + lemon juice or vinegar
Ratio: 1 cup milk + 1 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar, rested 5-10 min
Curdles the milk to mimic buttermilk's acidity and thin, slightly lumpy texture — works well for the leavening reaction in baking, but lacks buttermilk's characteristic tang and body.
Best for: baking (pancakes, biscuits, quick breads)
2. Plain yogurt
Ratio: 3/4 cup yogurt + 1/4 cup milk or water per 1 cup buttermilk
Closer in tang and acidity to real buttermilk than the lemon-milk trick, but noticeably thicker unless thinned.
Best for: baking
3. Sour cream
Ratio: 3/4 cup sour cream + 1/4 cup milk per 1 cup buttermilk
Rich and tangy like buttermilk, but higher fat content makes baked goods slightly denser.
Best for: baking
Running out of buttermilk mid-recipe is one of the most common substitution searches in baking, mostly because buttermilk isn't something many households keep on hand between the occasional pancake or biscuit recipe that calls for it — unlike milk, eggs, or butter, which get used constantly.
All three substitutes below work by recreating the acidity buttermilk provides, which is what reacts with baking soda to produce lift — none of them are trying to replicate its flavor exactly, since that's a much harder thing for a quick substitute to pull off, but the leavening chemistry is the part that actually matters most for a recipe to turn out correctly.
The milk-and-acid version is the most common substitute because it uses ingredients almost every kitchen already has, but yogurt or sour cream thinned with milk get genuinely closer to real buttermilk's tang and body if you happen to have either on hand.
The three substitutes here don't perform identically across every baked good, either — in a thin batter like pancakes, where the acid's leavening reaction happens fast and the batter cooks within minutes, any of the three works close to interchangeably; in a denser batter like a layer cake that spends much longer in the oven, the yogurt- or sour-cream-based versions hold their acidity and body a bit more reliably through that longer bake than the milk-and-lemon-juice trick does.
Buttermilk powder is worth keeping in the pantry specifically to avoid needing any of these substitutes going forward — it's shelf-stable for months unopened, reconstitutes with plain water only when a recipe actually needs liquid buttermilk, and can even be whisked directly into a dry flour mixture with plain water replacing the recipe's liquid, sidestepping the substitution question the next time a recipe calls for it.
Need to convert Buttermilk first? See its conversion page.
Frequently asked questions
Which buttermilk substitute is closest to the real thing?
Whichever one you thin with milk until it pours — plain yogurt and sour cream both start out thicker and tangier than the milk-and-lemon-juice trick produces, so loosening either with a splash of milk until it reaches pourable consistency gets noticeably closer to buttermilk's actual body than the acid trick manages on its own.
Does the milk-and-vinegar substitute work as well as milk-and-lemon-juice?
Yes — both acids curdle the milk similarly and provide comparable acidity for the baking-soda reaction; the choice between them is mostly about which one you have on hand and whether you want a very faint flavor difference in a delicate recipe.
Can I use buttermilk substitutes for drinking, not just baking?
Not really — these substitutes are built specifically to mimic buttermilk's acidity for baking chemistry, not its flavor or drinkability; none of them taste much like real cultured buttermilk on their own.
Can I use a buttermilk powder substitute the way I'd use one of these liquid substitutes?
Buttermilk powder (reconstituted with water separately, or added dry to the flour with plain water replacing the liquid) is a genuinely different product from these liquid substitutes — it's shelf-stable and worth keeping on hand specifically because it sidesteps the need for a substitute at all.
Does the milk-and-acid substitute work with non-dairy milk too?
It can approximate the acidity reaction with some plant-based milks, though the curdling and thickening won't look quite the same as with dairy milk, since plant milks don't contain the same proteins that visibly curdle under acid.