Easy Dairy-Free Dinners for the Week (That Don't Feel Like a Compromise)

Cooking without dairy sounds harder than it is. Most of the dinners people make every week don't need milk, butter or cheese at all. The trouble is that recipes reach for them out of habit: a knob of butter here, a handful of parmesan there.

So instead of hunting for "dairy-free versions" of creamy dishes, it's easier to cook food that never needed dairy in the first place.

Start with cuisines that rarely use it

A lot of the world cooks without much dairy. Chinese stir-fries, Japanese rice bowls, Thai curries made with coconut milk, Middle Eastern salads dressed with olive oil and lemon. Lean on those and dairy-free dinners stop feeling like a workaround.

Seven dairy-free dinners to try

These are all Frittu recipes, generated without dairy and checked for it before we put them up. Each one opens on its own page with the full ingredients, steps and macros.

• Ginger Chicken Vegetable Stir-fry: chicken, ginger and frozen vegetables over rice, on the table in about 25 minutes.
• Greek Beef Mince Potato Bake: beef mince with potato, spinach and olives, baked with oregano and a little cinnamon.
• Aussie Chicken Beetroot Traybake: chicken, beetroot and sweet potato on one tray. Very little washing up.
• Ginger Chicken Lentil Soup: red lentils, chicken and turmeric. It makes a good lunch the next day too.
• Beef Mince and Chickpea Cabbage Bowl: a one-pan dinner in about 25 minutes.
• Ginger Bottle Gourd Tofu Stir-fry: a plant-based stir-fry with tofu and rice.
• Harissa Baked Eggs Skillet: eggs baked in a spiced tomato and chickpea sauce.

There are three more in our dairy-free recipe collection.

Swaps that make it easy

• Olive oil instead of butter for roasting, frying and finishing most savoury dishes.
• Coconut milk instead of cream in curries and soups.
• Lemon, herbs and garlic instead of cheese for flavour at the end.
• Nutritional yeast when you miss a cheesy, savoury note.

Check the packets

Dairy turns up in places you wouldn't expect: stock cubes, spice mixes, sauces and some breads. If you have a dairy allergy, choose products labelled dairy free and read the ingredient list every time, even on brands you've bought before.

Letting Frittu do it

In Frittu, you add Dairy or Lactose Intolerance to your allergens once. After that, every recipe it makes, from a photo of your fridge, a cuisine you pick or your weekly meal plan, is generated without it and checked against your list before you see it. See how Frittu checks recipes for dairy.

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