Allergy-Safe Ingredient Replacements

Many recipes call for ingredients that aren't safe for people with celiac disease or other allergies. One extremely common example is Worcestershire Sauce, which usually contains soy sauce, which contains wheat. My allergies are corn, wheat, and sesame, so there is a lot of messing around I've had to do to find replacements.

Because I use the name of the replacement in my recipes, this page is organized on a "Replacement ingredient - Target ingredient" scheme. That means if you read an ingredient in a recipe and you want to know what it is, it will be the first word of the bullet point and you can look for it alphabetically. If you are looking for a suggestion for a replacement for a food that you are allergic to, Ctrl+F for the name of the ingredient you're looking to replace or check the "Close Approximations" section.

Direct 1:1 Replacements

These swaps will directly replace the allergen-containing food with a minimal change to texture or taste in all applications.

• Potato Starch (fine or ultrafine) - Corn Starch or any modified food starch
• Tamari Sauce - Soy Sauce

Close Approximations

These swaps may not work for every application but are worth testing in various recipes

• Bread Crumbs - This will not work for every application, but for things like meatloaf or meatballs, you can usually use oats in place of breadcrumbs.
• Corn Syrup - for candy, try to replace with brown rice syrup. For anything that does not need to set hard, honey may be an acceptable substitute.
• Malt Vinegar - Malt Vinegar has a very specific flavor that is difficult to replicate, I find that red wine vinegar comes the closest but you may want to add some tamari to the recipe to add the umami that is lost in the switch.
• Tahini - Sunflower Seed Butter. Sunflower Seed butter is the closest seed butter in taste to sesame paste; add in olive oil to thin it. If you don't have sunflower seed butter, you can try peanut butter but it will have a stronger taste.

Recipes for Replacements

Baking Powder Substitute

Baking powder often contains corn starch. I buy Hain's corn-free baking powder when I can get it, and if I can't get it I use this formula:

Let's call the amount of baking powder you need N. Replace it with N(.25) Baking Soda plus N(.5) Cream of Tartar.

So if you need two teaspoons of baking powder, you replace that with half a teaspoon of baking soda and one teaspoon of cream of tartar.