Increasingly appreciated for their nutritional virtues, dairy alternatives have enormously diversified in recent years. They are particularly well suited for all those who do not like or digest milk well. And this is the case for a good number of people!
On this page, we offer you 10 tips and recipe ideas that will allow you to appreciate even better the many advantages of dairy alternatives.
1. Vary your pleasures
Diversify the dairy alternatives you drink to balance the intake of cereals, oilseeds and soybeans.
2. Replace animal milk in your dishes
Use plain soy milk and sugar-free almond milk as a substitute for animal milk in quiches, vegetable pies, pancakes or crepes mix and salted pudding, bechamel sauce or any other salted recipe with animal milk. Oat milk is not very sweet, so it can also be used in salted recipes and will still bring a subtle taste.
3. Make your own vegetable desserts
Soy drink curdle and ferment like animal milk. Make your own soy yoghurt: mix 1 liter of Vanilla soy milk with calcium or Soy drink with calcium with a plain cow or soy yoghurt and pour into a yoghurt maker.
Just like animal milk, under the effect of acidity (e.g. lemon juice) soy curdle and thicken.
4. Use dairy alternatives in your sugary dishes
Use naturally sweet dairy alternatives (rice, oat, spelt), almond milks and sugary soy drinks in any dessert to replace cow milk in crepes batter, pudding, sweet pies dough, custards, rice pudding… think about reducing the amount of sugar in the recipe.
5. Think about olive oil
For smooth crepes, always add a drizzle of olive oil to your crepes batter to compensate for the very low fat content of dairy alternatives.
6. Make your custard great with soy
When making a custard with dairy alternatives use the vanilla soy milk or calcium to have the same creamy consistency as with cow milk. Add a spoonful of starch such as arrowroot, cornflour or cassava starch for a creamy result.
7. Think of vegetable drinks for breakfast
For breakfast, use cereal and oilseed drinks instead of animal milk in your cereals, muesli, hot cocoa and latte. Soy milk is less digestible when raw and unfermented, so you should rather use it for the preparations mentioned above. A hint of dairy alternative in tea is also very nice to add a little bit of sweetness and make it cool faster.
8. Make dairy alternatives foam
To make a cappuccino, make the vanilla almond milk froth with a hand blender and pour it over an espresso. To make a hot chocolate, melt 70 % dark chocolate in vegetable milk such as spelt or oat milk and beat the eggs so that it becomes perfectly homogeneous.
For a cold chocolate made of raw cocoa, mix raw cocoa powder with rice drink and add a pinch of cinnamon.
9. Blend your favourite fruits with dairy alternatives
For smoothies, blend fruits with dairy alternatives in a blender. Here are some examples:
- Banana, coconut milk, lemon juice, cinnamon
- Pear, almond milk, lemon juice
- Strawberries, rice drink, lemon juice
- Apricots, vanilla soy drink, almond spread: thanks to the acidity of apricots and the presence of (good) fats in almonds, soy drink immediately thickens. We get an instant cream dessert in which you can add a few peach pieces
10. Enjoy ice creams made with dairy alternatives
Ice creams are also delicious with dairy alternatives. For ice creams, use vanilla soy or calcium drinks on a custard base that you can flavour with chocolate, coffee, vanilla, pistachio… For sorbets, mix the fruits with the cereal and oilseed drinks, they will bring sugar and texture.