Silken tofu substitutes

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

Best for

vegan cheesecake, chocolate mousse, creamy salad dressings and dips, dairy-free alfredo and vodka sauce, vegan sour cream

Richer, faintly sweet and gently nutty where silken tofu is flat and neutral, and much higher in fat, so a cheesecake made with cashews sets firmer and eats heavier and more luxurious. That is often an improvement, but it means the dessert is less light and you may want to cut any butter or oil in the recipe. Soak the cashews four hours in cold water or fifteen minutes in boiling water first unless your blender is powerful, or the result stays gritty. Not an option for nut allergies.

Similar thickness, similar protein and similar blending behaviour, with the addition of real tang. 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.

The closest match on protein and body of anything on this list, and it blends into a thick neutral cream in the same way.

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.

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.

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.

The nearest thing in the same family. 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.

The honest case. 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.