| The Dairy-Free Zone. Good food, no cow juice. | |||||
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There is a wide variety of dairy-free 'dairy products' available. The available reviews of these are, in general, aimed at either the lactose-intolerant (and hence recommend low-lactose, not dairy-free products) or at products available only in the US. All of the products listed here are available in the UK, and availability information is listed where possible.
Milk-free milk | |||
| None of the non-cow-based milk alternatives is perfect, in that none of them will substitute for milk in all situations. However, if you mix and match you can usually find something to do the trick. | |||
| Soya Milk | Soya milk: love it or hate it you can't avoid it. Lots of different brands are available
in all sorts of flavours, all of which have one thing in common: they taste horrible (just
my opinion: if they rock your boat then enjoy!). However, bog-standard unflavoured soya
milk is pretty good as a substitute for milk in cooking most dishes: we've had
success with bread, cakes, biscuits, custard (although rice milk is better), white sauces
and so on. In sauces you're best off if you can cook the sauce for a little while: this
decreases the soya taste.
Brands: they're all more-or-less the same. The economy versions can be a trifle watery, however. Where to get it: virtually anywhere (Sainsbury's sell half-litre cartons, which are more useful than the usual litre ones). Gotchas: don't leave an open carton in the fridge too long since it can get truly revolting. Also, don't add cold soya milk to a boiling sauce as it will split. Adding a smidgen of cornflour to the sauce and taking it off the boil for a few seconds before adding the soya milk helps. | ||
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| Rice Milk | Like soya milk: it doesn't taste wonderful but is useful in cooking. Rice
milk comes into its own when cooking sweet dishes: this is what you use to make a
stonking dairy-free custard.
Brands: Rice Dream (from Imagine Foods) is what we've used. Where to get it: most big supermarkets and health food shops. Gotchas: The most commonly available form of Rice Dream is slightly flavoured with vanilla. Don't use it to make cheese sauce for lasagne, as vanilla-flavoured lasagne is Not Good. I speak from personal experience. Update Apparently, Provamel now make a non-vanilla flavoured Rice Dream, which should have significant advantages for cooking savoury dishes. | ||
| Oat Milk | Like soy milk, but with a less pronounced flavour. It makes decent cheese sauces, and
can otherwise be used in most of the places where soya milk is adequate. Better than soya
milk in sweet dishes (but not as good as rice milk unless you don't want vanilla flavouring).
Oatly claims that it's heat stable, which is an advantage in cooking.
Brands: Oatly and Oat Milk (Pacific Foods, I think: I don't have a website). Where to get it: Not easy to get hold of: most supermarkets don't stock it. Can usually be found in health food shops. Gotchas: has a slightly dusty flavour, although it does taste better than plain soya milk (not that that's hard). | ||
| Almond Milk | Not starchy, cooks nicely, a touch expensive. Makes great desserts due to its delicate
almond flavour.
Brands: Can't remember, but says 'Almond Milk' on the label. Where to get it: Sacrifice three goats and turn around widdershins. Alternatively pester your local health food shop to order it in. Not easy to find... Gotchas: it's sweet, so only use for sweet dishes (again, NOT lasagne). | ||
| Sunflower Milk | I don't know anything about this one: please
contact me if you have tried it!
Brands: Plamil White-sun Where to get it: health food shops Gotchas: please let me know if you find any! | ||
Cheese-free cheese | |||
| The 'food technologists' still haven't quite got cheese sussed. If you're expecting a perfect imitation of Gruyère or Stilton you are doomed to a life of disappointment. Doomed, I say. | |||
| Scheese | This is about as good as they get. It's described on the label as a 'soya-based solid food',
but don't despair as it's not quite that bad. The texture is sort-of-cheddarish, and the basic
flavour is fairly cheesy. The back-room boys have, however, gone a bit overboard in the
artificial flavour department and produced 'Mozzarella' (don't), 'Hickory-Smoked Cheddar'
(hmmm, safer not to), 'Cheshire' (acceptable) and 'Blue' flavour (which tastes more-or-less
like a blue-vein cheese but still has the texture of cheddar, which scrambles the
gastrological neurones slightly). Stick to 'Cheddar' flavour: it's perfectly tasty and
makes a decent addition to sandwiches (just don't toast it: see below).
It's from 'Bute Island Foods'.
Where to get it: Pretty ubiquitous in health food shops. Gotchas: Doesn't melt. At all. Cheese on toast becomes a nightmare of blue smoke and small black crispy bits. | ||
| Cheezly | A slightly soggy cheddar-like substance, brought to you by the
Redwood Company. Almost edible on its own
in sandwiches etc., but not quite. Its one overwhelming advantage is that it (almost)
melts. This is the artificial cheese that you need for cooking: grate it finely and
it will make a perfectly acceptable cheese sauce or topping for pizza. You do need to
heed the 'grate it finely' bit, though, or you get lumps.
Update: the Redwood Company's boffins must have been working overtime recently, as Cheezly now is New! and Improved! It is, too: both flavour and texture are better than they were, and I'd quite happily stick the stuff in a sandwich now. It still melts well, too! Where to get it: Pretty ubiquitous in health food shops. Occasionally found in larger Tescos either in the Organic Foods section or with the specialty cheeses depending on the mood of the shelf-stackers that week. It's vegan. Gotchas: Fungus. This stuff can generate more green fluff than a batch of day-old chicks and a bucket of E123. It also does bright red and a sort of mottled purple. Lovely. Our intrepid (and at times most unsavoury) investigations have revealed the secret to keeping Cheezly fluff-free: don't touch it, even with well-scrubbed hands. Handle using gloves or a plastic bag: if you touch it you'll get a beautiful set of fingerprints outlined in mould. | ||
| Vegerella | Reddish orange, damp, and thoroughly unappetising. Is advertised as melting well,
but the catch is that you still have to eat it afterwards. It's vegan(TM), if that's
important to you. Most of the other cheeses in this section are as well, but
Vegerella seems to be the only one that's paid for the logo.
Where to get it: health food shops only. Gotchas: Not nice. | ||
| Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese | A substitute for cream cheese. It's significantly sweeter than cream cheese (apart from
the over-processed Kraft stuff) but still quite tasty. The plain variety is quite good as
a sandwich spread, and there are several flavoured varieties which make a good dip-type
snack. This can be a bit hard on the crackers, though, as it's rather firm.
Where to get it: most health food shops, and very occasionally in some supermarkets. Not hard to find if you look around. Gotchas: bits of broken cracker from unsuccessful attempts to prise it from its container. | ||
| Tofutti Rice Slices | A fairly unappetising-looking pack of cheese slices individually wrapped in plastic.
Don't be put off, though: it doesn't taste bad (the Mozzarella one actually tastes
Mozzarellish), and it melts! This is now our #1 choice for pizzas, and it makes
excellent cheese on toast with a bit of salt and pepper. There are several flavours:
we've only tried the Mozzarella, so let us know what the others are like if you've
tried them!
Where to get it: Health food shops. It's still quite new, so ask your local shop to order it if they haven't got it. Gotchas: looks a bit plasticky, and the wrappings have obstreperous-cling-film factor. | ||
| Galaxy Foods Soya Slices | A dairy-free (and apparently everything-else-free according to the label) version
of the ubiquitous plastic Kraft cheese slice thingies. Similar principle to the
Rice Slices above.
Where to get it: health food shops Gotchas: Bright Bright Orange. Cheese slices shouldn't be this colour. Even Red Leicester isn't this fluorescent. | ||
| Parmesan (several sorts) | The state of the art in Parmesan substitutes isn't bad, actually. Although
it doesn't quite have the bite of the real thing, it's definitely Parmesan-flavoured
and works quite nicely sprinkled over pasta. It's also useful for boosting
the cheesiness of some of the other cheese substitutes in cooking: see our
cheese sauce recipe for an example.
Brands: There are several "dairy-free" parmesan substitutes available. However, be careful since many of them contain caseinates. These are fine if you're on a lactose-free diet, but if you're vegan or are completely dairy-free then these are no good. Luckily, there is one brand which is OK: "Florentino Parmazano" by St Giles Foods Ltd. It's labelled as vegetarian, contains no dairy products and so is probably vegan (but it doesn't have the little logo, probably because the little logo costs). Where to get it: most health food shops, and very occasionally in some supermarkets. Not hard to find if you look around. | ||
Cream-free cream | |||
| Cream is harder to fake than milk, as it's the fat content which is important for whipping, flavour and all-round sinfulness. That hasn't stopped a few companies from trying, though. None of the available products will behave like cream under all circumstances: see our cooking tips page for information on what you can and can't get away with. | |||
| Provamel Soya Dream | This is (if you'll pardon the expression) the crème de la crème of soya
creams. We buy it by the shipload and use it for everything from crème brulée
to beef stroganoff. If anyone from Provamel reads this, can we have a bulk discount? Many
of the recipes in our recipe section call for this, and there is in general no substitute.
Where to get it: Surprisingly ubiquitous nowadays. Most health food shops stock it, and it can be found in both Sainsbury's and Tesco's. After extensive investigation on behalf of my folks back in Australia, it's apparently not available there at all unless you can find someone in the UK to ship it to you. Gotchas: don't leave an open carton in the fridge too long since it goes bright red. Yes, you read that correctly. I have no idea whether it still tastes acceptable in this state and have no wish to find out. The other thing to watch is adding Soya Dream to a hot liquid: it has a tendency to split. See our cooking tips for more details. | ||
| Granose Soya Creem | Not quite as good as Soya Dream, more expensive, and comes in irritatingly-small boxes.
It behaves in much the same way, though.
Where to get it: Health food shops (occasionally). Gotchas: Again, has a tendency to split. Also, the name 'creem' just does not sound appetising. | ||
| Rich's Whip Topping | This has been in the freezer for months now, and we still haven't got around to trying
it. I have a horrible feeling that it will taste like that nasty artificial American
whipped-cream-in-a-can stuff, but I may be maligning it.
Where to get it: Health food shops. Gotchas: Will let you know when I've tried it. | ||
| Tofutti Sour Supreme | Surprisingly close to sour cream. Perfectly acceptable spooned over a burrito, for
example. It tastes closer to the real thing if you add a small amount of lemon juice and
some paprika to it.
Where to get it: Health food shops. Gotchas: we haven't tried cooking with it, so can't comment on its stability. | ||
Yoghurt-free yoghurt | |||
| Dairy-free yoghurts and desserts are very easy to find these days. As always, different brands are useful in different situations. | |||
| Provamel Yofu | The best approximation to natural yoghurt which we've found in the UK. It's edible
(especially if
you mix some jam into it) and works quite well in recipes calling for yoghurt. We've had
successes with curries, stroganoffs, moussaka and frozen yoghurt (although the last was
a touch firm and icy). Also available in 'Summer Fruits' and 'Strawberry' versions,
which taste great and
seem to lack the starchy soya taste of the 'natural' version. Yofu's organic, too.
Where to get it: Surprisingly ubiquitous nowadays. Most health food shops stock it, and it can be found in both Sainsbury's and Tesco's. Gotchas: None (how about that!) | ||
| Sojasun Organic Live Soya Dessert | Terrible name, great product. The 'Raspberry Passion' is to die for. The 'Strawberry'
is less exciting but still good. Lots of other flavours are available.
Where to get it: health food shops only. Gotchas: the pots are too small. | ||
Butter-free butters | |||
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The first thing to remember when choosing a spread is that unless it says on the box that it contains no diary products, it probably isn't safe no matter how harmless the ingredients may look. Remember that many ordinary margarines contain skimmed milk powder as a bulking and binding agent.There is a range of dairy-free spreads out there. Many are only available from health food shops, which makes them both inconvenient and expensive. We tend to use Sainsbury's Dairy-Free Spread most of the time. It is pleasant to eat on bread (butter eaters don't usually object to it unless they see it being used!) and it works well in sauces and general cooking/baking. The only things I don't use it for are making pastry and crumble topping : hard margarine works better and is also cheaper. For cakes, puddings etc. I use either, depending on what I have in the fridge. For bread made in the bread machine I always use spread, making it by hand I would use hard margarine because it makes the rubbing in stage easier. The Sainsbury's spread is readily available at the larger stores, but can be very intermittent in the smaller ones. If it isn't in your local one, keep pestering customer services: since it is one of their own brand products they can usually be persuaded to give it at least a trial run. All you have to do then is to but lots of it! It used to be soya based, but is now soya-free since Sainsbury's wanted to be able to guarantee it G.M. free. Of the specialist spreads from health food shops, there is a Granose one which is palatable (if a little flat tasting), but rather expensive. It's soya based. There are also several sunflower oil spreads out there. The one made by Pure tastes O.K. and works fine in most cooking, though it doesn't blend well with sugar if you are trying to melt them together. The oil tends to float on top of the sugar and you can stir it till the cows come home, but the sugar won't dissolve. | |||
Hard Margarines | |||
| There are some block margarines out there which are edible, but you have to know where to look. Hard margarine is my favoured option over dairy-free spread for making pastry, crumble topping and bread if I'm making it by hand. It goes into the breadcrumb stage much more effectively than dairy-free spread because it is hard. | |||
| Safeway's own Sainsbury's own |
Both very much the same. Both hard to find at times other than around
Christmas: it seems people only bake at this time of the year these days. The
good news is that it keeps for ages in the fridge and it freezes well. I stock
up each year and keep my eyes open in case a batch comes in out of season
Where to get it: Safeway/Sainsbury's Gotchas: Don't use it on bread if you run out of dairy-free spread: not nice!. | ||
Dairy-free Pastry | |||
| I tend to make my own shortcrust because it's so easy with a food processor, but I use store-bought puff pastry for things like pies. | |||
| Jus-Roll | Jus-roll fresh pastry is dairy-free (at the moment - always check the ingredients) and good to use. They do both shortcrust and puff pastry. Both versions freeze well and defrost quickly if you seal the pack in a plastic bag and plunge the bottom into warm water.Where to get it: Available from most supermarkets, including small Co-op stores. | ||
| Sainsbury's own | Sainsbury's own brand Fresh Puff Pastry, Shortcrust Pastry and Filo Pastry are all dairy-free and readily available. Being fresh the puff and shortcrust both freeze well. | ||
Dairy-free breads | |||
| It can be difficult to find dairy-free bread. We'll have some reviews here soon! In the meantime, we have our own recipe | |||
Miscellaneous | |||
| Suet | Atora make two usable versions: traditional beef suet and vegetarian
suet. The beef version is always totally dairy-free. The vegetarian version
you have to look carefully at the ingredients. Some use rice flour and
hydrogenated vegetable oil which is fine, but some use vegetable fat which may
or may not be O.K.. The problem is that you don't know whether or not they
really mean vegetable fat or whether they mean margarine, because some
margarine contains skimmed milk powder and some doesn't. This means that you
have to check jars of mincemeat carefully. They are getting better at putting
the full ingredients on the labels, but if in doubt I contact the company's
customer services department. A bit of persistence usually gets a definitive
answer.
Where to get it: virtually any supermarket. | ||
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