When we finally figured out that Jacob has a dairy allergy, we had to do some major overhauling of some of our everyday kitchen staples. After a few rounds of trial and error, we were able to make enough swaps that we don’t have to worry about making different versions of the same meal. With Jacob’s dairy allergy and my nut allergy, finding a milk alternative was particularly challenging. We would have tried oat milk, but oats are one of Jacob’s FPIES triggers so, while it would have been safe for me, it wouldn’t have worked for him. I hope these swaps are helpful!
- Milk – We tried a few different options, but we’ve been using Ripple Unsweetened as a milk substitute for the past year and we’re really happy with it. It substitute one-to-one in recipes and it doesn’t change the taste of what we’re cooking with the way soy can.
- Butter – This was a big one. We tried a few avocado-based butters and they never quite tasted right, and I felt like they changed the way whatever I was cooking tasted. After Claire in her infinite wisdom suggested Country Crock Olive Oil butter when I was in panic mode, I ran out to get it and we’ve never looked back. It comes in both sticks and tubs, and it also substitutes one-to-one in cooking. It really does taste just like real butter, both on its own and cooked in. The only thing is that it melts much faster than milk-based butter, which is helpful to know if you’re melting it in a pan. We also used it in my Grandma’s Christmas cookie recipe this year, and they kind of melted a little bit after we took them out of the oven because the butter was still so soft inside the cookie…if that makes sense. All in all, I think this swap is a permanent one for us!
- Breadcrumbs – As any person of Italian descent knows, breadcrumbs are a major food group and the best kind contain at least two kinds of cheese, so this swap was a hard one for me to make. It was also really challenging to find a safe alternative because another one of Jacob’s FPIES triggers is rice – and that stuff is in every dang thing. Eventually, we found Pope Plain Breadcrumbs which only have three ingredients…seriously. They don’t taste exactly like the breadcrumbs I’ve always used, mostly because they’re unseasoned so they don’t actually taste like much, but you can add whichever seasonings you like to them to enhance the taste a little bit. They are a bit thick so it took a little practice to figure out how to use them in a way that my chicken cutlets didn’t have half an inch of breading on them, but I finally have them hang of them.
- Coffee Creamer – This one was huge. Like…the most important. Jacob was exclusively breastfed when we made the dairy-free switch, and the child did not sleep more than 2.5 hours at a time for the first year of his life, so there was no way in heck I was going to compromise my sacred morning coffee. With nut milks out of the running, my dairy-free options were pretty limited. I tried oat milk but I didn’t like the way it frothed. I tried Vanilla soy milk because I love myself a vanilla latte, but it was too sweet in what I found to be a flavored kind of way. I landed on Original unflavored soy milk (the Silk brand to be specific), and it’s the perfect amount of sweetness without an artificial flavor taste. I just add a pinch of sugar to the bottom of my coffee cup before I brew my favorite Nespresso pod, froth my “milk”, and it’s like I’m at my own personal Starbucks. This swap too is likely a permanent one – I don’t think I could go back to regular milk in my coffee without feeling sick now.
I know that facing a switch, especially after figuring out that a baby or other family member has a dairy allergy, can feel really overwhelming. There are so many options but none are exactly like the foods that so many of us are so accustomed to and attached to. I hope this list give you some confidence that making the switch to dairy-free can be really easy to do as a family, and that there are even some options that will stick around forever in our house even after we’ve hopefully finally said goodbye to our dairy-free days!
xo,
Stephanie
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