Frugal alternatives to more expensive ingredients

Posted by FrugalPinoy on Jan 26, 2009 in Food, Frugal Tips | 1 comment

If you enjoy cooking as much as I do, then there are always those recipes that you’re dying to try.  The downside is that you might not have the ingredients on hand, or the recipe might include expensive ingredients.  If you only need a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, for example, it doesn’t make sense to buy an entire bottle if you don’t think you’ll use it in everyday cooking anyway.

This is where substitution comes in.  Sometimes, expensive ingredients can be replaced with cheaper, easy-to-find alternatives.  Here are some examples:

Sour cream.  This costs around P75 if you buy it from a store. If you just get the regular cream (P35) and gradually add vinegar or lemon juice as you stir it, you’ll get the same effect.  Just use your taste buds to judge the quantity, but 2 to 3 tablespoons of vinegar to one cup of cream should do the trick.  Sometimes I add a bit of mayonnaise if I’ll be using the sour cream in a dip.

If you don’t want to do all this mixing, you can also use yogurt in the same amount as the sour cream.

Cream cheese.  It’s P115 a block, so if you’re only going to use small quantities, you can use these suggestions from AllRecipes: the same amount of yogurt, strained with a cheesecloth overnight.  I haven’t tried this yet, though.

According to the article I mentioned earlier, you can puree some cottage cheese (same as the needed amount of cream cheese), but the price difference would be smaller, because the last time I checked, cottage cheese was P95/cup.  I generally just buy cream cheese rather than do substitutions, since it goes well with almost anything.  If for some reason you can’t find it (they don’t have it in the grocery nearest my house), then by all means try these substitutes.

Parmesan cheese.  If you have some leftover queso de bola from the holidays, you can grate that and use it instead of buying parmesan.

White/red wine vinegar.  The substitution depends on what you need the wine vinegar for.  If it’s the acidity that’s needed, then you can simply use any vinegar you have – just add it gradually and judge it with your tastebuds until it has the level of acidity or sourness you need.  Since red wine vinegar is generally milder, you can halve the quantity required in the recipe.

White/red wine.  For white wine, you can substitute chicken or fish broth (depending on what you’re cooking). According to an article I found at About.com, you can also use ginger ale, or canned mushroom liquid.  If you’ll use it as a marinade, you can mix 1/4 cup vinegar with 1 tbsp sugar and 1/4 cup water.

For red wine, you can substitute grape juice.  If you’re using tetrapack or powdered juices, they might be too sweet, so diluting them with broth or water might help.

Here are some additional ingredient substitute lists I found online:

• from E-cookbooks.net
• That’s My Home substitution list
• FoodSubs.com (this one is the most comprehensive, as it even lists substitutes for kitchen tools)

Do you use substitutes for expensive ingredients?  Are there any tips you’d like to share with us?

Image by Steve Woods from Sxc.hu