If you have ever tried to limit or remove a food group from your diet, then you may have experienced the disappointment of craving your favorite dish and then realizing you could no longer eat it. Dairy appears in many of my favorite traditional recipes, and if you are not extremely familiar with baking or cooking, simply replacing a troublesome ingredient can be a daunting task. It’s a task that I certainly have not mastered but have had quite a bit of practice with since I stopped eating dairy.
My secret is that I didn’t try to figure it out alone! I’ve attempted many replacement recipes for those favorite dishes of mine that I just couldn’t give up, despite their heavy reliance on dairy ingredients. Check out some of my favorite dairy-free recipes from experienced chefs and bakers and begin the journey of learning how to remove dairy from your diet without removing the joy from your kitchen!
never realized how much I used pie crust, both in savory and sweet recipes until I couldn’t. Butter has been by far the hardest dairy ingredient for me to replace, mainly because I am a college student and I don’t want to order fancy dairy-free butter. I would much rather use common pantry ingredients that I already have in my kitchen or that I can get easily and cheaply from the local grocery store.
This pie crust requires just four ingredients; all-purpose flour, salt, vegetable oil, and any milk. I used unsweetened almond milk for chicken pot pie and coconut milk which is naturally sweeter when I made dairy-free chocolate pudding pie.
Finding a dairy-free recipe for a creamy pasta sauce was a must for me. It was also a dish I knew would be difficult to replicate without the fatty creamy dairy ingredients that make it so delicious. This recipe on From My Bowl was the third I tried and was the only one I found to be thick enough for my liking. I made some replacements to the ingredients to match what I keep in my kitchen and added some cooked meat and vegetables to the dish to make a complete meal, but otherwise followed the directions of the recipe.
The recipe calls Gluten-Free Spaghetti Noodles (I used regular noodles of whatever shape I had available), Garlic (I used 3 tsp of garlic powder and 1 cup diced yellow onion), Unsweetened Non-Dairy Milk, Nutritional Yeast (if you’ve never used nutritional yeast it’s available in 1 tbsp packages for less than 50 cents at Walmart), Brown Rice Flour (I used all-purpose flour), Salt, Black Pepper, to taste, Pinch of Red Chili Flakes (Optional, but I did use!), and Juice of Lemon (I used 1 tsp vinegar and 1 tsp orange juice).
This recipe was a life saver for me as well. A few of my favorite dishes that come to mind especially in the colder months are chicken pot pie, shepherds pie, and green bean casserole, all of which require cream of chicken, mushroom, or celery soup. Whenever I see cream I know I’m going to be looking for a replacement recipe. This recipe was one of my favorites that I’ve used.
It calls for organic chicken broth (I used non-organic), almond milk, flour, salt, pepper, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, basil (I don’t have any oregano or basil and it’s turned out fine), cooked mushroom (optional-cream of mushroom), cooked celery (optional- cream of celery). This recipe makes “one can” of the soup and can be used in any dish that calls for it.
I know that it can feel like finding ways around dairy ingredients in recipes is nearly impossible, but you are not alone! Don’t be afraid to lean on the knowledge of experienced chefs and bakers, who’ve curated dairy replacements in so many amazing recipes just for us. I hope you are inspired to try my favorite dairy-free recipes and maybe find a dairy-free recipe for your favorite meal!