Dairy replacements?

Question

I have just been diagnosed with I.B.S and i have been given antispasmodics which work well on the pian, but there are still certain foods that trigger pain. I have had to cut out dairy products, white pasta and rice, bread and potatoes

I'm coping ok without the bread and potatoes, but milk and cheese i'm missing

Is there anything i can use as replacements that dont taste bad, or taste the same. Soya Milk just isnt right.

Also anything elce i can use as replacements to the bread etc too would be good, i use brown rice and pasta which works ok

Answer 1

Here are a few - don't think they taste that great though!

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


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).

gluten-free breads - you can buy packet mixes for making up breads and they are each very different - I will try and get some recommendations as I've forgotten which ones are best. The advantage to these is the long shelf-life of the packet and that you can make them up into burger buns, pizza bases, loaves etc..but they do have to be consumed fresh and often make up to more than is needed and you have to go through mixing, rising, cooking etc.. it can be quite tricky until you get the knack and unfortunately they don't taste great.

Some of you might be inclined to have a go with a breadmaker - we haven't tried this yet but have the offer of a loan so will give it a go soon and let you know how we get on.

for substitute bread products we've found Dietary Specialities to be the best.

Orgran do a lot of substitute products - their pizza base mix makes up a lot of pizza base so is quite good value for money compared to other products.

Various cake and biscuit mixes are available which are okay.

Something I can recommend if you're a pancake eater is Orgran's apple and cinnamon pancake mix which works really well - add whatever toppings you fancy for variety.

they also do Falafels but these are very salty and I'll forward on a recipe for home-made ones later.