How to Replace Nightshades in Cooking

[ysabetwordsmith]

These substitutes are useful whether you can't eat these vegetables at all, need to limit quantities, dislike them, or simply ran out. 
* Eggplants
* Peppers
* Potatoes
* Tomatoes

Goji berries are also nightshades, but they don't appear in many foods.  That makes it easier to substitute them.
* Amla (green mango) or Indian gooseberry
* Other berries

Comments

[cmcmck]

Since the veggies you mention include the 'holy trinity' (peppers, potatoes, tomatoes) I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't cook with them especially being veggie.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It can be quite challenging, because they've spread all over the world and gotten into most cuisines. However, they're all from the Americas. Most places didn't have them until the last few centuries. So one approach is simply looking at older recipes from other cultures.

I find it interesting to look at lists of alternatives, because even if you can eat a thing, it might not always be available. Besides, trying different flavors is interesting.

[tarasacon]

You get creative. Really creative. Since for me the results of eating them include intense pain it was easier to take it seriously. Fortunately I’ve regained the ability to eat tiny amounts occasionally, though there’s still a cost. But it makes it easier to eat restaurant food a few times a year instead of having to cook every single meal myself.

And every so often I have one heck of a pity party for myself because I *miss* all my favorite foods so much.

[cmcmck]

I can see why.

My only food allergy is to eggs and I didn't like them much anyway (you know how they fed them to you as a kid because 'everyone likes eggs') while there are good substitutes available where they are needed as an ingredient. Orgran 'no egg' is excellent.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

While I enjoy eggs, I'm a big fan of knowing lots of alternatives. Sometimes you don't have enough eggs, or are cooking for someone who doesn't eat them. Other times, something else just works better -- lower calories, more flavor, etc.

https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/cooking-tips-tutorials/g33584750/egg-substitute/

[tarasacon]

I developed an egg allergy fairly recently and am still sorting out navigating around it. I miss mayonnaise! And my favorite salad dressings!! Nightshades are a sensitivity, not an allergy. Mostly they trigger my various autoimmune diseases. Then wheat, corn, and lentils are closer to actual allergies. With no wheat, corn, or potatoes, a lot of commercially available vegan and vegetarian foods are no longer an option. At least, I have yet to find a vegan mayonnaise that doesn’t include corn starch &/or potato starch. Ditto most of the egg substitutes. *shrugs*

Try this ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Mayonnaise:
These samples use different emulsifier/binder ingredients. If you can use an ingredient but don't care for the recipe, you can search for other recipes using it. My search string was:
vegan mayo recipe -corn -wheat -potato

Almond milk and avocado:
https://silk.com/plant-based-recipes/vegan-mayonniase/

Almond milk and flax powder:
https://hardlyagoddess.com/no-egg-no-dairy-mayo-vegan/

Aquafaba and chickpeas (not lentils, but still a legume):
https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-vegan-mayo-aquafaba-recipe-vegan-experience

Avacado oil and palm shortening:
https://thehonestspoonful.com/aip-mayo-egg-free-mayo-recipe/

Cashews:
https://www.veggiesdontbite.com/fall-harvest-burrito-with-homemade-vegan-mayo/

Coconut cream:
https://recipesaresimple.com/recipe/vegan-mayonnaise/

Coconut milk, olive oil, and gelatin:
https://purehealthtransitions.com/mayonnaise/

Dairy cream:
https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/how-to-make-vegetarian-eggless-mayonnaise-1764513

Firm or extra-firm tofu:
https://foodrevolution.org/recipes/easy-vegan-mayo/

Nondairy milk (so many options to try!):
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/how-to-make-homemade-vegan-mayo/

Silken tofu:
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-make-vegan-mayo-mayonnaise-recipe

Soy milk:
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-make-vegan-mayo-mayonnaise-recipe

Soy milk and honey or brown rice syrup:
https://bcfarmsandfood.com/vegan-mayonnaise/


Interestingly, I did not see anyone using tapioca starch, which was my first thought as a substitute for cornstarch. Tapioca starch is slightly sweet, gluey, and glossy. I love it for thickening pie filling. I suspect it would work great for the sweet-tart balance of mayo. Other possibilities include arrowroot powder, pectin, and agar agar. I also thought about a variety of foods that naturally produce gel, such as okra and chia, but there I'm not sure how to get the just the gel from them. These sorts of ingredients have binding capabilities that improve the body and stability of recipes.

If you have any knack for kitchen chemistry, think about how mayonnaise works and what its ingredients do. This may help you seek alternatives to ingredients you can't use. Egg in mayonnaise is an emulsifier (combining the oil and water) and binder (holding things together to create body and stabilize the mixture).

Here's a list of some food binders.

Natural emulsifiers include carageenan, gelatin, gellan gum, gum arabic, honey, karaya gum, locust bean gum, mustard, pectin, and tannins. I saw little of this in mayo recipes except for mustard which is common; honey appears as a sweetener in some non-vegan recipes and is a go-to ingredient in salad dressings.

I also suggest shaking down world cuisine to see if anything else interesting falls out. Condiments are among the things that vary the most based on local ingredients. Eggs are less used in many cultures; wheat, corn, and potato will be harder to avoid but still possible, especially in older recipes (since corn and potato came from the Americas). You may find other things to try as a mayo ingredient (like cassava flour) or a completely different sweet-tart spread.


For favorite salad dressings, you could:

* Search the name of the dressing and put a - sign in front of ingredients you don't want: -egg, -potato, etc.

* Think of a base you like that is somewhat similar to whatever you can't use (e.g. mayonnaise, sour cream, and cashew yogurt are all thick tangy white condiments) and transfer the original spices or other flavorings to that.

* Explore totally different toppings, especially from other parts of the world. It won't replace what you lost, but may introduce new favorites.


Now I'm imagining a street fair in Terramagne with a booth displaying 20 different kinds of vegetarian, vegan, and/or allergy-friendly mayonnaise for people to taste-test, complete with recipes to make your own or jars you can buy and links to kitchen chemistry resources. Kind of like a hot sauce booth here.

Re: Try this ...

[tarasacon]

Wow, thank you for the resources!

I currently use a blend of plain yogurt, olive oil, a splash of vinegar, and seasoning, to approximate mayo for things like tuna, or salad dressing. It’s a bit too thin, but it provides sufficient creamy base given I’m only ever cooking for myself.

And yes, I lean heavily on foods from many other cultures to still get a level of flavor that interests me. I have several friends who are Sri Lankan, so I’ve long used south asian cuisines for influence. Lately I’ve been playing with east african cuisines (Somalian, mostly.) And I just invested in some high quality fish sauce and some other Japanese and se asian ingredients, to see where I can go with those.

Re: Try this ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Wow, thank you for the resources! <<

*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service. A problem that can be fixed with information is usually one I can fix. :D

>> I currently use a blend of plain yogurt, olive oil, a splash of vinegar, and seasoning, to approximate mayo for things like tuna, or salad dressing. It’s a bit too thin, but it provides sufficient creamy base given I’m only ever cooking for myself.<<

If the main complaint is texture, that's one of the easiest to fix when you have an otherwise useful base ingredient. The simplest approach would be to use Greek yogurt, which is already thicker. You can make your own just by pouring ordinary yogurt into a cheesecloth or muslin kitchen bag and letting it drain. (I used a chopstick to hang mine inside an empty pitcher in the fridge.) You can also make labna this way, which is a very nice yogurt cheese similar to cream cheese. International stores often carry that. You can beat it into regular yogurt as a thickener. Yogurt is cheap, play around with it and see what you like.

A different approach would be to add a thickener, such as tapioca starch. People talk a lot about how to thicken yogurt. Any dry ingredient tends to have this effect, so for instance, use dry powdered spices instead of fresh. Or if you're making a fruit salad dressing (which are sometimes made with mayo or sour cream, and can be replaced with yogurt) then freeze-dried fruit powder is a great option.

You could also explore different yogurt types. Stonyfield makes a fantastic whole-milk yogurt with 6 cultures. It also has a cream layer on top that is quite sticky and my favorite part. They offer both fruit flavors excellent for snacking and vanilla or plain that are good as ingredients. Bellwether makes a sheep yogurt with a whopping 12 cultures. It is thicker than average with a very strong sheepy, cheesy taste. While this is not what I consider ideal for snacking yogurt, I think it'd make a fantastic ingredient yogurt for dips, spreads, marinades, etc. These are cases of "more is better" where whole milk and/or more different live cultures tend to create thicker yogurt with better body and more complex flavors.

>>And I just invested in some high quality fish sauce and some other Japanese and se asian ingredients, to see where I can go with those.<<

We tried a bunch of new things when we got a wok:
* mirin -- a syrupy cooking wine, good for wok sauce but I'm not sure I'd use it anywhere else.
* oyster sauce -- we bought the fancy kind made from cooked-down oysters, which is tasty, but not sufficiently different from soy sauce that I feel compelled to replace it if it runs out
* rice vinegar -- a great light vinegar
* sesame oil -- amazing dark roasty flavor, but needs time to cook or it tastes burnt
* soy sauce -- we got a less-salty one, but still, use it like Worcester sauce a spoon at a time, not by the half-cup

One thing that I haven't tried but would love to is seaweed seasoning. I found a Welsh one with 2 types of seaweed in other spices, but sadly it's not available in America. :/

[jtthomas]

I've regained limited nightshades, but I'm forever thankful to a friend who suggested fenugreek for its sweet-yet-tangy flavor, very similar to what many nightshades bring to a dish.

[cmcmck]

Cardomom has unlimited possibilities too!

[tarasacon]

Cardamom is a lovely thing. I’m also quite fond of black cardamom (Amomum subulatum). Have you tried it?

It’s in a completely different plant family than the more commonly known green cardamom, but the form is similar and the flavors… have some overlap? It smells a bit like smoky cloves. (Not clove cigarettes!) I often use it in bean soups, among other things.

[tarasacon]

I notice they don’t mention regular plums as a substitute for tomatoes, just umeboshi. I’ve had decent luck with subbing them for tomatoes. Go heavy with the seasoning people associate with spaghetti sauce and the nose and brain do the convincing.

Zucchini can also be cooked to provide the sort of body/base that a big can of tomatoes would usually provide in soup, with tamarind or vinegar, and a little sugar, to shift the flavor.

I’ve been expanding my vinegar collection to allow more nuance.

[cmcmck]

I trust you've included the nectar known as balsamico? :o)

[tarasacon]

I have a knock-off balsamic, yes. :)

I lean heaviest on rice vinegar and cider vinegar, for general cooking. They are easily manipulated into mimicking the acid from tomatoes. And affordable.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yeah, those are among the fruitiest and most affordable. Red wine vinegar is worth a thought if you can find one that leans orange rather than purple. There are brewed fruit vinegars, but those are much pricier.

A useful tangy-fruity thing you may not have tried is amla (green mango) which can be found whole, powdered, or various other forms in Indian food supplies.

Re: Thoughts

[tarasacon]

I currently have red wine, white wine, rice, apple cider, and balsamic vinegars. No champagne vinegar right now, which is too bad because it’s really nice on salads.

I will keep my eye out for amla. I’m also looking for a decent source for tamarind paste, since I don’t currently have transportation to get to the Indian grocery store across town. (The stuff available through amazon is gross.) There’s a small halal grocery near me though, run by Somali immigrants. They are useful for a lot of the spices I would other get at Patel Brothers. I will have to look there for the amla.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I currently have red wine, white wine, rice, apple cider, and balsamic vinegars. No champagne vinegar right now, which is too bad because it’s really nice on salads. <<

Let me think ... I have red wine, white, rice, apple cider, balsamic, and maple. If you enjoy fancy vinegars and like maple flavor, I highly recommend the maple vinegar. On its own, the maple flavor is subtle, but where it really shines is using it with maple syrup, because then you can adjust the flavor anywhere on the sweet-sour spectrum that you want. Just stellar for things like vinaigrettes, fruit salad dressings, or marinades.

>> I will keep my eye out for amla. I’m also looking for a decent source for tamarind paste, since I don’t currently have transportation to get to the Indian grocery store across town. (The stuff available through amazon is gross.)<<

Try looking at online spice shops or international food vendors, they probably have better options than Amazon.

https://spicesnbeyondco.com

https://ranibrand.com/

https://www.pureindianfoods.com/

I noticed that these tend to list amla as Indian gooseberry and green mango as amchur. They're both sour fruit things. Getting the exact item and name matched up can be challenging because things aren't always listed or called the same.

>> There’s a small halal grocery near me though, run by Somali immigrants. They are useful for a lot of the spices I would other get at Patel Brothers. I will have to look there for the amla.<<

Good idea. Our favorite African store is run by immigrants, I think from Nigeria.