Silken Tofu substitute

Best substitute

Raw cashews blended with water

1 cup raw cashews plus ½ cup water for a 12 oz block of silken tofu

Best for vegan cheesecake

Different taste

Soaked cashews blended smooth make a thick, pourable cream. The best vegan swap and the one most dairy-free dessert recipes reach for anyway.

Other silken tofu substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Full-fat plain yogurt or Greek yogurt
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
Similar thickness, similar protein and similar blending behaviour, with the addition of real tang.
What changes
The easiest swap if dairy is acceptable.
Best for
creamy dressings, dips and sauces, smoothies, cheesecake fillings, chocolate mousse, baked goods where tofu was adding moisture
Noticeably sour, which changes the recipe rather than just filling the hole, so cut any lemon juice or vinegar in the recipe by about half and taste before adding more sweetener. In a chocolate mousse the tang is actually welcome and reads as a slightly cheesecake-like richness. Greek yogurt is thicker and closer to a blended silken tofu; ordinary yogurt is looser and may need straining. Obviously not vegan and not dairy free, though plant yogurts work the same way at the same ratio: coconut yogurt is the richest and tastes of coconut, and cashew or almond yogurt is more neutral and better in a savoury sauce.
3Cottage cheese or ricotta, blended smooth
Different taste
Use the same amount by weight
The closest match on protein and body of anything on this list, and it blends into a thick neutral cream in the same way.
What changes
Best for
cheesecake and baked desserts, creamy pasta sauces, high-protein smoothies and dips, lasagne fillings, savoury blended sauces
Cottage cheese blends to something remarkably like silken tofu in texture but is salty, so hold back the salt in a savoury recipe and rinse it if you are using it in a dessert. Ricotta is sweeter and slightly grainier, and no amount of blending removes that graininess entirely, though pushing it through a sieve helps. Both are far more forgiving in a baked cheesecake than tofu is. Neither is vegan.
4Coconut cream
Different taste
Use the same amount by volume, using the thick part of a chilled tin of full-fat coconut milk
Chill a tin overnight, scoop the solid cream off the top, and you have a thick, rich, dairy-free base that firms up beautifully when cold.
What changes
Best for
no-bake vegan cheesecake, chocolate mousse and ganache, panna cotta style chilled desserts, curries and creamy soups
Distinctly coconut, and there is no hiding it in a delicate dessert, though chocolate and lime both cover it well. It sets on chilling because of its saturated fat rather than because of protein, which means it is excellent in anything served cold and unreliable in anything baked, where it can melt out and leave the filling loose. It also has almost no protein, so it will not do silken tofu's job as an egg-like binder.
5Soft tofu, blended and sieved
Close match
Use the same amount plus 1 to 2 tablespoons water per cup, then push through a sieve
The nearest thing in the same family.
What changes
Soft tofu and sundubu are set the same way as silken but are slightly firmer and more fragile in the block.
Best for
any silken tofu use, blended, soups and stews, sauces and dressings, when the shop only had soft
Very close, and in many countries the two labels are used almost interchangeably, so what you buy as soft may in fact be silken. Blended it is marginally less smooth and can carry a faint chalkiness, which a sieve fixes in thirty seconds. It has a slightly stronger beany flavour than the aseptic-carton silken tofu, so in a delicate dessert add a pinch of salt and a splash of vanilla to cover it.
6Nothing else, when the wobble is the dish
Close match
Omit
The honest case.
What changes
In a handful of dishes the texture of the intact block is the point, and no substitute reproduces it.
Best for
sundubu jjigae and soft tofu stews, mapo tofu, hiyayakko, cold tofu with soy and ginger, agedashi tofu, silken tofu as an egg replacer in a quiche or frittata
For the stews, soft or sundubu-grade tofu is the only real answer, and firm tofu makes a genuinely different dish, chewy and sliceable rather than melting. For hiyayakko there is no substitute at all, because you are eating the tofu on its own. As an egg replacer in a baked savoury tart, silken tofu is doing a specific setting job that yogurt and cashews cannot copy, and a chickpea flour batter is a better route than a dairy one.

What is Silken Tofu?

Silken Tofu is Silken tofu is soy milk set into a soft custard in its own package without ever being pressed or drained, so it has no curds and no chew and sits somewhere near the texture of panna cotta, which is why it is blended into creams rather than fried or stir-fried.

Cooking tips

Do not press it and do not drain it hard. Pressing is what you do to firm tofu, and doing it to silken tofu forces out the water that makes it silky and leaves you with a crumbled mess. Tip off the packing liquid, lift the block out on a spatula, and use it as it comes.
Blend it for a full minute, scraping down the sides at least once. Almost every complaint that silken tofu tastes chalky or beany in a mousse comes from under-blending: thirty seconds gives you a slightly grainy puree, ninety seconds gives you something genuinely silky. A high-speed blender or a stick blender in a narrow jug both work better than a food processor.
It is flavour-neutral to a fault and needs seasoning that other creams do not. A silken tofu chocolate mousse without a pinch of salt and a splash of vanilla tastes flat and faintly of beans, and with them it tastes like chocolate mousse. In savoury use it needs salt plus acid plus something umami, whether that is miso, mustard, nutritional yeast or lemon.
For blending, the shelf-stable aseptic cartons are the ones to buy, since they are the smoothest and are what most vegan dessert recipes are written around. A twelve-ounce or three-hundred-and-forty-gram block gives roughly one and a half cups blended, which is a useful conversion when a recipe measures in cups.
In soup, add it in the last two minutes and off a hard boil, either in the block or spooned in as rough curds. Stirring silken tofu into a vigorously boiling pot shreds it into cloudy specks. Slide it in and nudge it rather than stirring.
Silken tofu will not fry, grill, bake into cubes or hold a marinade, and there is no technique that changes that. If a recipe wants browned tofu, it wants firm or extra firm, and buying the wrong one is the most common tofu mistake. Freezing does not help either: freezing gives firm tofu a useful spongy chew, and it destroys silken tofu, which thaws into a weeping, curdled mass.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use firm tofu instead of silken tofu?

For blended uses, really not. Firm tofu has been pressed, so its curds are dense and its structure is set, and blending it gives a grainy, chalky paste rather than a cream no matter how much liquid you add or how long you run the machine. A vegan cheesecake made with firm tofu is the classic version of this mistake. If firm tofu is all you have, use soaked blended cashews, yogurt or blended cottage cheese instead, all of which are much closer.

Is soft tofu the same as silken tofu?

Nearly, and the labelling is inconsistent enough that it varies by brand and country. Both are set in the package without pressing. Silken, especially the aseptic carton kind, is the softest and smoothest and has the most delicate custard set. Soft tofu and Korean sundubu are a shade firmer and are usually water-packed, which makes them slightly more robust in a stew and slightly less silky in a blender. They swap for each other freely; just sieve the blended soft tofu if it feels at all grainy.

What is the best vegan substitute for silken tofu in cheesecake?

Soaked raw cashews blended with water, using about a cup of cashews and half a cup of water in place of a twelve-ounce block. It sets firmer and richer than tofu and tastes gently nutty rather than neutral, so pull back any oil or vegan butter slightly. For a no-bake version, the thick cream scooped off a chilled tin of coconut milk is excellent and sets beautifully cold, with the caveat that it tastes of coconut. Cashew or coconut yogurt also works and gives a tangier, lighter filling.

Can silken tofu replace eggs, and can something else replace it in that role?

Silken tofu is a common egg replacer in baking, usually about a quarter cup blended per egg, where it supplies moisture, protein and a little binding but no leavening. Substituting for it in that role is harder than substituting for it in a mousse, because yogurt and cashew cream do not set the same way. Blended cottage cheese comes closest on protein if dairy is fine, and for a savoury baked custard or crustless quiche, a chickpea flour batter is the more reliable vegan route than any cream.

Can I just leave silken tofu out?

Very rarely, because silken tofu is almost never a garnish. In a mousse, a cheesecake or a creamy dressing it is the body of the dish, and there is nothing left if you remove it. In a soup it is one component among several and the soup survives without it, just with less to eat. If the recipe uses a small amount to thicken a sauce, a couple of tablespoons of yogurt, cashew cream or coconut cream will cover the same job.

Related substitutes

More dairy alternatives substitutes

Silken Tofu substitute

Other silken tofu substitutes

2Full-fat plain yogurt or Greek yogurt

3Cottage cheese or ricotta, blended smooth

4Coconut cream

5Soft tofu, blended and sieved

6Nothing else, when the wobble is the dish