Vegan heavy cream substitutes

Neutral, silky, and completely boil-proof, which is what most savory recipes actually need.

Best for

pasta sauce, creamy soups, gratins, curries, vodka sauce

Soak the cashews four hours in cold water or fifteen minutes in boiling water, then blend until there is no grit at all. Unlike soy or oat cream it will not curdle with wine, lemon or tomato, and it thickens as it heats rather than thinning out, so a pasta sauce clings properly. The flavor is faintly sweet and buttery but essentially neutral, so it disappears into a sauce. It absolutely will not whip, and it is a tree nut.

The only widely available option that both cooks and whips, at the cost of coconut flavor.

Best for

curries, ganache, whipped topping, ice cream, tomato cream sauce

This is the workhorse. Its saturated fat sets hard when cold, which is why it is the standard vegan whipped cream and why it makes a firm ganache. The trade is unmistakable coconut aroma, which is invisible in a Thai curry or a dark chocolate ganache and very obvious in an alfredo or a potato soup. To mute it in savory dishes, add extra salt, a teaspoon of lemon juice and a little nutritional yeast. Look for pressed or refined coconut cream if you want less aroma.

The most convenient direct swap for cooking, but neither one whips.

Best for

pasta sauce, soups, quiche filling, mashed potatoes, gravy

Oat cream is slightly sweet, so a savory sauce made with it needs more salt and a squeeze of lemon to balance. Soy cream is more neutral but splits more readily when you add acid to a hot pan, so stir in wine or lemon off the heat. Both are around the fat of single cream rather than heavy cream, so they will not reduce down into a thick coating sauce the way dairy does. Finish with a teaspoon of cornstarch slurry if you need body.

Very neutral, high in protein, nut-free, and prone to tasting flat.

Best for

savory cream sauces, quiche, creamy soups, baked pasta

Blend for longer than you think necessary, until there is no chalkiness left. It gives real body and it is stable in the oven, which is why it is popular in vegan quiche. The problem is that it has almost no flavor of its own and a slight bean edge, so it can make a sauce taste watery and dull unless you season aggressively with salt, garlic, nutritional yeast and acid. It does not whip and it does not brown.

For anything that must set firm at fridge temperature.

Best for

ganache, truffles, chocolate tart filling, no-bake cheesecake

Extra saturated fat is what turns a soft coconut ganache into one you can slice or roll. Refined coconut oil is worth seeking out here because it is deodorized and tastes far less coconutty than virgin. Expect the set to be firmer and more brittle than a dairy ganache, and expect it to soften quickly at room temperature, so keep the finished dessert cold until it is served.

The genuine emergency version, and the honest limits of it.

Best for

creamy soups, mashed potatoes, gravy, scalloped potatoes

This gets you fat plus liquid, which is enough to enrich a soup or loosen a mash, and it takes ninety seconds. What it will not do is reduce into a sauce that coats pasta, because there is no emulsifier holding the fat and liquid together and it will separate into a greasy layer if you boil it. Use it where the cream is being poured in at the end, not where it is being cooked down.