Out of Milk You Need For a Recipe? Try These Simple Substitutions

Even with restaurants slowly opening back up over the next few months, there’s a good chance we’ll still be cooking at home more often. Of course, it’s also been a little difficult to get our hands on some of the groceries we need for specific recipes. 

If your local dairy aisle is usually the first to look depleted — or you’ve been dying to make a dish that requires the one type of milk that always seems to be missing from the store — you can try using a few simple swaps. The experts at Cook’s Illustrated recently shared a handy list of substitutions that mixes up different types of dairy and ingredients to get the same delicious results.

Take a look:

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You might want to print that off and hang it up in your kitchen for future cooking reference. Building whole milk out of half and half and skim makes sense, but who knew you could use evaporated milk as a heavy cream substitute? Or heavy cream to make half and half? They also recommend similar techniques we rely on to whip up our own buttermilk. 

For those with dairy allergies or just prefer plant-based milks, you can also make your own nut-milk. Whichever way you go, you can also help your milk product last longer by freezing it for up to three months and letting it thaw overnight in the fridge before using. 

As you can see, we’ve all had to get a lot more creative with dwindling kitchen supplies lately. Thank goodness there are so many easy ways to keep our kitchens stocked. Psst: We also found a couple ways to bake up fresh bread even if you’ve run out of yeast.

Our daily lives and cooking habits may look different now that we’re all adapting to this “new normal,” but we’re glad it doesn’t mean we have to go without our favorite recipes!