cooking @ home

What do I always say? Buy new spices, different herbs, try things out!! You don’t have to do it all at once. A little at a time and build up your cooking aresenal. Now, all that is true. I’m not backing off of any of it; not in the slightest.

However — yes, the “big but” — you know sometimes you go through pages of a cookbook or you watch a cooking show and you just want to scream out: “Hey, buddy! We don’t all have every ingredient in the world like you do!!” That’s right, not every pantry or spice cabinet can have everything.

What happens is usually the dish in question is so exotic that it either requires it’s own special trip to the store for those oddly exotic ingredients — or you decide to forget it, that it’s not worth the trouble. Ah, but what about the myriad recipes in between? The one’s that call for something you probably should have but don’t. That you ran out of it. Or you never did have. Sometimes you start making the dish only too late into it and realize you’re missing something and there’s no time to run out to the market. Now what?

Where you can: substitute ingredients. The only other option is to leave it out. That second way can cause a major culinary disaster, depending on just how critical the missing element is. The first way can save the dish from ruin. Sure, it might be slightly altered, but the keyword there is “slightly”. Now, If you’re a stickler for maintaining the intact originalty of a recipe, stop reading this article. For the rest of you, please continue.

The idea of this article is to give you things that are good substitutions, close to the original as possible. Mind you, if a chef goes out of his or her way and says specifically “don’t substitute” then you really should listen to them, it means they’ve tried alternates themselves and it failed. (One comes to mind where a television cook said if you’re out of dijon, substituting yellow mustard made for a rotten dish.) Most of the time they don’t say it and you can do it. It won’t work in every instance now; you have been warned. But the following will work in most cases and just might “save the day”.

One more thing. Some of these substitutions below I put in because of cost. Why spend four to ten times as much money for something that isn’t so necessary? Save your money, and use a replacement that is a lot cheaper and is still very much “close enough”.

Vinegars

Even a well-kept pantry of spices with a lot of diversity never has everything. I think I have a pretty nice collection now, personally with two shelves full of baking supplies and three more for spices and such. I happen to have a bottle each of red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar and bulsomic. That’s it.

It sometimes annoys me when I see the cook on television or the recipe ask for something else … rice wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, champagne vinegar and the list goes on and on. I mean even for me who likes to collect a wide variety of things, I have to ask excactly how many vinegars do I need to have? Apparently three dozen based on all the stuff I run across asking for this or that. I ran out a year ago and purchased bulsomic vinegar because so many recipes need it. I’ve used it once. Mind you, it’s a good one, but apparently one that so far I could have lived with out. Imagine that times ten though. You could put out hundreds of dollars in vinegars and not use them. What to do then? Well, you can fudge it.

Don’t have cider vinegar? Replace with a combination of white vinegar, apple juice and a teaspoon or tablespoon of whisky. (Apple juice and a bit of whiskey tastes nearly the same as apple cider). Don’t have rice vinegar, maybe you have sake or dry sherry instead (and of course some white vinger) Will these taste the same? No. Will they be close enough? Nine out of 10 times, they’ll work just fine.

Buttermilk

I can’t stand the taste. For drinking that is. Therefore I never think to buy any at the store. But biscuit and fried chicken afficiandos swear by this as a must for their recipes. To get a buttermilk substitute that works well enough: 1 cup whole milk plus 1 tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar, let sit for 10 minutes, mix and use.

Semisweet Chocolate

1 cup of semisweet chocolate – 14 tbsps unsweetened chocolate (essientially 2 tbsps shy of a full cup) plus 2 tbsps sugar. To put it another way, 16 tablespoons equals a cup, so go 2 tablespons less than that cup and add sugar to get it back up to that one cup amount.

Greek Yogurt

Bascialy identifcal to normal yogurt but more dense, less water. Answer: drain your “usual” yogurt (using cheese cloth, clean towel, strainer, etc) of excess water and liquids for 15-30 minutes then use.

Shallots

The darling of professional chefs everywhere … phooey! I have no problems with shallots, which are in many ways a cross between an onion and garlic … It’s the prices! A five pound bag of red onions where I live is currently two bucks, while a single pound of shallots is $4. Do the math and the difference is shallots are ten times more expensive. And here is the deal, shallots look like and carmalize in the pan like onions, have a texture like onions yet have a taste that is more like mild garlic.

Answer: use red onions with a dash of garlic (or garlic powder). Way cheaper and in the end a very close match to what the chef was trying to achieve.

Herb Variants

Yeah we know Oregano, but what about Mexican Oregano? You use Basil but what about Thai Basil? If you know what the difference in taste is like. “Cheat” your way there.

Mexican Organo – is like the Italian oregano we’re used to, but with a slight mint quality. This one’s obvioius, use regular oregano. However, just as obvious but easily to overlook, add a dash of mint to it.

Thai Basil – varies from regular basil (which is actually known as sweet basil) in that it has a hint of licorice taste to it … depending upon the nature of your recipe (salad, soup, cake, stew, etc.), maybe a pinch of star anise, or a drop or two of licorace extract, or a tablespoon of Sambucca along with your regular basil will bring that recipe up to snuff.

Use this idea with other regional versions of herbs. Not sure what they taste like. Use the search engines and you’ll probably come across a description quickly enough, then go on from there.

And for one last a substituion — and one giant gripe …

Grand Marnier

Gimme a break! This is another one that is as bad as the shallots, but even more wildly expensive! Do chefs put filet mignon into a stew? Hell, no. How about substituting lobster tail meat for crab claw meat? Never. Yet they do this with the liquor Grand Marnier all of the time! Use Triple Sec. Both are orange liquors. Guess what though? 500 ml Grand Marnier at the liquor store I went to just yesterday was $33. Triple Sec for three times the amount of liquid volume cost a mere nine bucks! Do the math, about 10 bucks for one, and the same volume of the other would cost a hundred. So tell me this isn’t the most ridiculous thing you’ve heard of yet?!

I mean at least with shallots there’s a slight degree of understanding why chefs like them: it looks like this, acts like that, and tastes like the other. In this case, there is zero excuse. So why do chefs do this then? I honestly don’t know, but my guess is it has to be in the name. That’s correct: marketing hype. It sounds oh so more sophisticated to say, “a Grand Marnier infused whatever” than “stick some Triple Sec in it”. If there wasn’t such a gigantic cost factor difference, I’d let it slide. Since there is one, I’m calling them on it. And saying to you, don’t fall for it.

Make this easy substitution and save yourself a ton of money, and trust me, no one will know the difference. I bet not even those same cooks that tell you to use the other in the first place can tell the difference. And yes, definitely, if I ever had a chance to test it out, I’d love to do that. We could call the show “Chefs Get Punk’d”.

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