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
- 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.
- 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.