So You Want To Cook Without Eggs, Dairy or Gluten? Try These Easy Ingredient Swaps
Whether you're avoiding certain food groups due to allergies, intolerance or just dietary preferences, it's important to know these simple substitutes when cooking or baking
It can be tricky to navigate recipes when you have certain allergies, intolerances, or dietary preferences. Or perhaps, you don't have all the ingredients on hand. Whatever the reason, these simple substitutions for common ingredients can be a lifesaver when it comes to cooking or baking. And they are all easily available in supermarkets all over Singapore, you don't have to trek across town to a specialty store.
Having a dairy intolerance means having to avoid all products containing milk, lactose, butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, whey, milk solids, non-fat milk products, skimmed milk powder, lactoglobulin, casein, lactalbumin or sodium caseinate. Lactose is in all mammals' milk to a greater or lesser extent (including human milk). So depending on how allergic you are, you may also be advised to avoid sheep, goat, buffalo and horse milk products as well as dairy products made from cows’ milk.
You can use soy milk and any soy milk products as a substitute. Sometimes fat from butter can be replaced with olive or other vegetable oils. Other times you can use fruit juice — it's a great substitute in cakes and cookies because they're sweet anyway.
Rice milk and almond milk are other options. If a recipe only has a small amount of milk, you can try substituting rice milk and almond milk. But if a recipe has a lot of milk it swapping nut milk with dairy doesn't always work because nut milk is much more grainy.
If you have an egg allergy, you should avoid any products that are labelled as containing albumin, dried egg, egg white, yolk, protein or solids, globulin, livetin, lysozyme, ovalbumin, ovoglobulin, ovomucin, ovomucid, ovovitellin or vitellin and pasteurised, powdered or whole egg.
Sometimes you can leave out the eggs in a recipe that calls for only one or two eggs. Replace them by adding water. However, this is not recommended with most baking recipes, so you will need to either use commercial egg substitutes (available from most supermarkets) or experiment with other substitutions.
If the purpose of the egg is to bind the ingredients, you can try substituting mashed banana, apple puree, soft tofu or gelatine dissolved in hot water. If the egg is required as a thickening or setting agent you could use wheat, rice or cornflour blended to a paste with a little water to do the job.
Wheat flour contains gluten. There are many other grain flours that do not contain gluten, including Almond Flour. Sorghum flour, Amaranth Flour, Teff Flour, Arrowroot Flour, Brown Rice Flour and Oat Flour. Buckwheat may contain the word “wheat,” but it is not a wheat grain and is gluten-free.
If you're substituting gluten-free flour for wheat flour, you usually get the best results with recipes that only have a small quantity of flour in them. That's because gluten is a sticky substance that stops baked goods from crumbling and improves their texture by trapping pockets of air - gluten is why bread and cakes get fluffy.
But you can replicate these effects of gluten by adding xanthum/xanthan gum, pre-gel starch or guar gum in the approximate proportions of 1 teaspoon to 1 cup of flour. You can buy these gums from some health-food shops and The Coeliac Society. In some recipes it is possible to avoid flour altogether by using nut flour instead.
Agar and gelatin serve similar purposes as gelling agents and thickening agents in various recipes. While gelatin is made from animals, agar is made from red algae seaweed, which makes it a popular vegetarian or vegan substitute for gelatin. It's also used in some halal recipes where the animal source of the gelatin cannot be guaranteed.
You can buy agar powder or flakes in Singapore in many supermarkets. You can also use arrowroot, guar gum and xanthan gum, although they tend to be sold only in specialty and health-food stores. Follow the directions on the package for best results.
Sugee cake gets it interesting texture from ground almonds. But regrettably, there is no substitute for nuts that gives the same texture to cakes. If there's only a small amount of nuts in the recipe you can try using grated coconut - because despite the name, coconut is not a nut.
But if you have a nut allergy, talk to your doctor first. Even though coconut isn't a nut, some people who are allergic to tree nuts, like almonds, cashews, and walnuts are also allergic to coconut. But others are not. So talk to your doctor to see if coconut is okay for you. Until then, avoid coconut.
Text: bauersyndication.com.au
Additional Reporting: Jesslyn Lye