Vegan Substitutes:

VEGAN SUBSTITUTES:

Here are a few ingredients that I like to use as substitutes:


1. Nutritional Yeast Flakes:

Find it at: Whole Foods, Amazon.com, other health food stores

Use: Nutritional yeast has a cheesy, nutty flavor and can be used  to make cheesy sauces, vegan mac n' cheese, sprinkled over popcorn, or as a seasoning.

2. Vogue Cuisine Instant VegeBase:

Find it at: Whole Foods, Amazon.com, other grocery and health food stores.

Use: for soup broth, sauces, and gravy. (They also have a chicken-flavored broth).

3. Earth Balance Buttery Spread:

Earth Balance has all the flavor of butter and more. I have never cooked with or eaten a lot of butter, but I definitely use a lot of this Earth Balance now that I've discovered it.

 

Find it at: Whole Foods, pretty much any grocery store in the dairy section.

Use: anything you'd use butter for.

Other brand buttery spreads: Smart Balance and Best Life. These brands are also good, and they're cheaper than Earth Balance. You can  find these brands in the grocery store too. I also cook with a lot of olive oil instead of butter.

4. Daiya Dairy Free Cheese:

Daiya is my favorite dairy-free cheese. I've only had the mozzarella flavor, but I know that Daiya also has cheddar and pepper jack flavors. It doesn't taste exactly like mozzarella, but it's salty and gooey and pretty much amazing. It's like crack for me. My only problem with it is that it has a sticky texture when it's melted. It sometimes feels like you're eating glue, but hey, at least it tastes better.

Find it at: Whole Foods, Health food stores, and select grocery stores. You can probably ask your grocery store to special order it for you.

Use: the same as you would for cheese.

5. Galaxy Foods VEGAN (not RICE - it contains milk ingredients)* Grated Parmesan:

True story: Parmesan cheese was my absolute favorite food before I went completely vegan. I was addicted, and it was definitely the hardest for me to give up. I sprinkled it on everything. It made everything taste amazing, but I realized later that it only masked the flavors of everything else I was eating. Needless to say, after months of trying, I was finally able to give it up, and today, I really have no desire to eat it.

I found this when we were on vacation. I was kind of leery about it at first because I haven't eaten Parmesan in so long and because all of the other Parmesan substitutes I've found have been subpar compared to the real Parmesan cheese , but I figured that I might as well give it a try.

Anyways, this ended up tasting almost exactly like real Parmesan cheese. When my dad mixed the Parmesan with olive oil and other seasonings to dip fresh bread in, I yelled at him for putting Parmesan in it when I took a bite. He just laughed at me. Only then did I realize that he used the Vegan Parmesan.

Find it at: Whole Foods, select grocery stores (I found it at Food Lion), other health food stores, and Amazon.com.
Use: as parmesan cheese: sprinkled on pasta, in sauces, etc.

 Dad and I on vacation in Bethany Beach, DE/ Ocean City, MD. <3

*Make sure to buy the Vegan Parmesan, not the Rice Parmesan. I made the mistake a couple times. I made the mistake of thinking that all cheese substitutes are vegan. They're not. :( Fortunately, they have a Vegan Parmesan that's just as delicious.