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My Soy Free Kitchen: Soy Free Cooking Essentials

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If you’re struggling with soy allergies or food allergies in general, finding great alternatives for traditional ingredients can be tough, but it can be done! Here are our favorite soy free cooking products that we use in our kitchen

If you're struggling with soy allergies or food allergies in general, finding great alternatives for traditional ingredients can be tough, but it can be done! Here are our favorite soy free cooking products that we use in our kitchen - @TheFitCookie #soyfree #foodallergies

If you have have soy allergies, you know how hard it can be to avoid it! Soy products and soybean oil are in just about everything these days since it’s so cheap to produce and readily available. But there are some great products out there that are soy free if you have soy allergies! Today I’ll share some of our favorite soy free cooking staples.

Several of us have soy allergies in my house: my daughter, my son, and I are all allergic to soy (and possibly my husband, the verdict is out still on him). It’s not a severe allergy or anything, but enough to make us miserable! My daughter gets eczema on her hands like I do when we have soy, and it gets pretty bad.

Years ago I was having nagging health problems like dry patches and itchy skin, dark circles under my eyes, and sinus congestion. I had gone gluten free for a while to see if that helped, and it helped a little bit but none of these things went away completely until I cut out soy and a few other things I didn’t realize I was allergic to at the time (yeast and eggs).

While we still have a few things with a little bit of soy in the house (sometimes our store bought bread has soybean oil in it), I really try to avoid soy in everything we eat. I can have little bits of it here and there, but can’t have very much of it or regularly or my eczema flares up badly.

Even though my kids aren’t gluten free, everything I mention below is also gluten free, as well as dairy free since I’m also allergic to dairy. These products are often more expensive than their soy-full counterparts, but staying healthy and itch free is always worth the extra cost.

And just a side note: we’ve gotten comments before on social media and on the blog about how our food choices are unhealthy/not-as-good-as-mine/etc from food police who feel the constant need to criticize. This post is for helping people who have food allergies, not so people can judge our food choices. Negative comments will be deleted to keep this positive for people.

If you're struggling with soy allergies or food allergies in general, finding great alternatives for traditional ingredients can be tough, but it can be done! Here are our favorite soy free cooking products that we use in our kitchen - @thefitcookie | coconut amino bottles on a wood cutting board|

Soy Sauce Alternatives

I love cooking asian cuisine and my family loves it too! Whether it’s sushi or stir fry, we all adore asian food of all kinds. Over the years, I found that coconut aminos work great as a substitute for soy sauce, and the coconut amino teriyaki sauce from Coconut Secret is really good, too. We add them both to stir fry, sushi, noodles, and more.

Note: Please remember to regularly check labels since product recipes can change! We update our food lists when we can, but we are not responsible for product recipe changes that may add allergens to a previously safe food. Always check labels before purchasing even if it is listed by our website as most likely safe.

When we go to our favorite sushi place, I carry a little container of coconut aminos with me to dip my sushi in. So good! Coconut aminos are naturally a bit sweeter and less salty than soy sauce, and it has a wonderful flavor to me.

Another thing we love to add to asian recipes is fish sauce and toasted sesame oil (not pictured). Fish sauce has a strong taste and is salty, but it adds an awesome flavor dimension to asian food, as does sesame oil. Sesame oil has a low smoke point, so I don’t add it to the pan as it’s heating or it easily gets burned, but I add it soon after I begin cooking the other ingredients.

If you can’t have coconut aminos due to coconut allergies (or something else), Ocean’s Halo makes a soy-free soy sauce that’s also not made with coconut. I haven’t tried this brand yet so I’m not sure how it tastes.

I’ve found that different brands of coconut aminos have different sodium levels and sweetness levels. The Coconut Secret brand tends to be more sweet and less salty, the Big Tree Farms brand and O Organics (Albertsons/Safeway store brand) tend to be saltier and less sweet.

Update: I tried the Ocean’s Halo soy free sauce and it’s not too bad, I personally prefer the taste of the coconut aminos, my husband prefers the taste of the Ocean’s Halo sauce since he’s not a fan of coconut aminos.

There is a newer option from San-J that is a soy sauce alternative made with peas instead of soybeans made with the same fermentation method as their soy-based tamari. I ordered a bottle of this to try, I’ll come back and let you know how it tasted!

Here’s a list of some soy sauce and teriyaki sauce alternatives (we haven’t tried all of the brands listed, I have also not checked these for allergen cross contamination so make sure to check the labels before buying):

If you're struggling with soy allergies or food allergies in general, finding great alternatives for traditional ingredients can be tough, but it can be done! Here are our favorite soy free cooking products that we use in our kitchen - @TheFitCookie | soy free palm oil and soy free Earth Balance Margarine on a wood cutting board |

Shortening and Margarine Alternatives

One of the things a lot of people miss with cutting out soy or making their kitchen a bit healthier is good pie crusts from cutting out traditional shortening made with hydrogenated vegetable oil (lots of soybean oil). Even if you don’t have soy allergies, regular shortening is a good thing to remove from your diet!

While coconut oil could be used as a sub for shortening, it’s not very stable for cooking since it has such a low melting point. Palm oil shortening works really well for making flaky pie crusts and soft cookies. The brand we use (Spectrum) is sustainably sourced, organic, and non-GMO.

Since we can’t have dairy, we used to use margarine a lot before we started eating healthier and cutting out soy years ago. It took a while before stores in our town started carrying soy-free margarine, but we found the Earth Balance Soy Free that our local Walmart stocks. It’s non-GMO and vegan, so no dairy, and it’s delicious!

This bakes okay, but like coconut oil it melts quickly so we use mostly palm shortening instead of the Earth Balance Soy Free in baking and frostings. They also make sticks of the Earth Balance Soy Free but we usually buy the small tubs.

Other soy free margarine/butter alternatives:

  • Melt Organic plant butter
  • Miyokos’ cultured butter (both a cashew butter and an oatmilk butter option)
  • Country Crock Plant Butter Sticks (the sticks do not have soybean oil but the tubs do have soybean oil)
  • Earth Balance Soy Free margarine
  • Flora plant butter
  • Violife butter
If you're struggling with soy allergies or food allergies in general, finding great alternatives for traditional ingredients can be tough, but it can be done! Here are our favorite soy free cooking products that we use in our kitchen - @TheFitCookie | powdered coconutmilk creamer box on a wood cutting board |

Non-Dairy Creamer Alternatives

There are a ton of options out there these days for coffee creamers, like almond milk creamers and coconut milk creamers. Plain almondmilk and coconut cream work great as sugar free creamers in coffee (and I use them all the time), but it’s nice to have a powdered creamer option for traveling that is also dairy and soy free.

I’m not sure of too many other non-dairy and soy free powdered creamer brands out there, but I did find the Simple Truth coconut creamer and it has very little sugar in it and I love using it (it mixes the best when beverages are hot). They have single serve packets for travel or they have a bigger canister as well. I’ve used this before in homemade cocoa mix and homemade cappuccino mix and it’s great!

I’ve also been using the Nut Pods for my own coffee, while my kids use the So Delicious, Silk coconut, or Natural Bliss coconut creamer for their decaf coffees.

If you're struggling with soy allergies or food allergies in general, finding great alternatives for traditional ingredients can be tough, but it can be done! Here are our favorite soy free cooking products that we use in our kitchen - @TheFitCookie | jar of SunButter and bag of chocolate chips on a wood cutting board |

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Alternatives

So finding a soy free nut butter and chocolate alternative these days isn’t as hard as it used to be, but I wanted to mention these anyway. Some nut butters have hydrogenated soybean oils in them, and some chocolate chips have soy in them, too.

We regularly use SunButter, which is soy free, and the Enjoy Life chocolate products since they are top 8 allergen free. We used to use Ghiradelli semisweet chocolate chips, but they changed their recipe and started using dairy in them, so we avoid them now.

The Nestle Simply Delicious chocolate chips are one of our new favorites, and we like them better than many other chocolate chip brands we’ve found so far, including Enjoy Life!

Soy free and egg free mayo options

If you have egg allergies AND soy allergies, finding a good mayo can be hard since a lot of vegan mayos still use soybean oil.

Here are some good soy free vegan mayo brands that we’ve tried. You can check out photos of the ingredient labels in our Instagram post):

  • Good & Gather vegan mayo from Target, has a sweet-ish taste similar to miracle whip (but not as sweet). It’s pretty thick like regular mayo. **Update: check the labels on these, some of them included soybean oil last time I checked).
  • Green Garden plant based mayo, we’ve been getting his at our Walmart and the one we currently use the most. It’s rather tart, it has more vinegar in it than normal mayo, but I don’t mind it. It is a little thin, I wish it was thicker. But this makes good homemade ranch dressing.
  • The Hellman’s vegan mayo comes in a squeeze bottle and tastes a little like Miracle Whip with some sweetness to it.
  • Sir Kensington’s vegan mayo, this one has good ratings on Amazon, but I didn’t like the taste of this one at all, I couldn’t put my finger on what I didn’t like about the taste. We barely used it.
  • Just Mayo is my favorite and one we’ve used for a long time, but it’s hard to find for me. Our Walmart used to carry it but the company got weird with their products and distribution so it’s not available in my area and I can’t find it consistently when I go out of town. **Update: I’m pretty sure this product has been completely discontinued as of spring 2022**
  • Follow Your Heart soy free veganaise is good (from what I remember) but is usually overpriced locally so I rarely buy it.
collage image showing various egg free and soy free mayo brands.

Here are a few egg free and soy free mayos we haven’t tried yet:

If you can have eggs, there are some great paleo brands of mayo without soybean oil in them, like Sir Kensington, Chosen Foods, Gefen, and Primal Kitchen.

Or you can make your own mayo with this paleo recipe from Paleo Running Momma!

Soy free miso

Since we love Asian cuisine and my daughter really misses having miso soup, I set out to find some soy free miso since I had heard about chickpea miso.

I was surprised that I actually found several brands of miso that are made without soybeans! I’ll share the ones I found below, and will try to update this regularly.

Adding a note here that I haven’t tried out any of these brands yet and I’m not familiar with the taste, quality, or potential cross contamination with allergens of these all of these products. So if you have questions about the manufacturing for any particular brands, please reach out to their company directly.

Soy free miso outside the US

Other soy free products we use that aren’t pictured:

  • Daiya non-dairy cheese and cream cheese, all soy free and top 8 allergen free
  • Violife dairy free cheeses and cream cheese (better than Daiya!)
  • Back to Nature crackers
  • Triscuit crackers do not use soybean oil at the time of writing this (double check since Nabisco/Mondelez changes their ingredients often)
  • Silver Hills bread has no soybean oil (contains wheat)
  • Wheat Montana bread is not made with soybean oil (they do have an allergy warning for dairy, soy, and tree nuts however)
  • BFree, Little Northern Bakehouse, and Canyon Bakehouse brands make gluten free bread products that are not made with soy flour or soybean oil
  • Dave’s Killer Bread usually has no soybean oil in it
  • Kashi Gluten Free frozen waffles are soy free
  • Bumblebee very low sodium tuna, Ocean Naturals canned tuna, Wild Planet canned fish, and StarKist Tuna Creations BOLD are all soy free (many kinds of canned tuna are packed in vegetable broth containing soy, and some pouch tuna contains soy flour)
  • Enjoy Life Foods packaged cookies are soy free and free of all top 8 allergens

Please remember to regularly check labels since product recipes can change! We update our food lists when we can, but we are not responsible for product recipe changes that may add allergens to a previously safe food. Always check labels before purchasing even if it is listed by our website as most likely safe.

18 thoughts on “My Soy Free Kitchen: Soy Free Cooking Essentials”

  1. Hi
    Thank you so much for all all this great information. I have soy allergies and dairy
    and this has helped me so much. Thank you also to the posters for their replies.
    I have had to be so careful with what I buy and eat because of breakouts and
    digestive upsets now I have all this great information. Thank you and god bless.
    Best Reguards,
    P.Hargrove

    Reply
  2. We found a soy free mayo that we really like, although it’s not on any of your lists. We now buy Gefen mayo (made with cottonseed oil), and my family will eat it. My husband has always loved Hellman’s, and this is the closest we’ve found to that flavor. It’s kosher, as well, for those that need that. We can only get it on Amazon, but it’s worth it for us. It does have eggs, though, but my family is allergic to soy, so it’s OK for us.

    Reply
  3. I have an allergy to Nickel in foods, SNAS, and soy is very high in Nickel(as well as nuts and chocolate and many other foods). I have found a few soy free items I can eat. Martin’s Butter Bread and since a well known brand decided to add soy to all their crackers 🙁 I found another brand- the Original Nabisco Premium Saltines.

    Reply
    • That must be tough to deal with, I didn’t realize that soy was high in nickel! I did see that Ritz crackers are now being made with soybean oil, which is so frustrating since it was a safe option for my daughter who has a soy allergy. I need to find other cracker options for her. Bread is such a hard one to find since most commercial breads have dairy or soy. I think I’m going to have to start making bread at home again since our local options are pretty limited.

      Reply
  4. Hi Sarah
    Years ago chicken feed was made up mostly of cracked corn grain like cracked wheat and oats. Never beans.
    We lived on a farm and ground our own feed for all our animals soy bean was not an additive. It has only become an additive into the mid to late 80’s that soy is used to much and in everything. Wonder why so many kids have so many problems and there are so many cases of dementia in the world. Soy…

    Reply
    • What’s interesting is that soy has been a regular feature in Asian diets for thousands of years (estimates say farming soy started around 1100 BC), but they often fermented their soy. It doesn’t seem to have been a health issue for Asian cultures to have soy regularly in their diets, but modern soy products are often heavily sprayed with pesticides, genetically modified, processed as protein isolates, highly refined soybean oils, etc. I don’t think traditional ways of eating soy were a problem as much as modern preparations of soy products. Plus soy is almost everything, so not only is it highly processed and inflammatory, we’re getting it in almost everything we eat that’s commercially prepared (creating overload).

      Reply
  5. Hi! I was just wondering if you might have problems with the eggs because they are fed a soy diet. My husband developed a soy allergy a couple years back & was sad about eggs. We discovered that if we buy soy free eggs, they don’t bother him!

    Reply
    • Hi Tara, I’ve heard of this before and have wondered about this, if I’m just reacting to the soy in the chicken feed that ends up in the eggs. I don’t know that I have ever been able to find any chicken eggs that were completely soy free, even my mom used commercial feed with her chickens and we weren’t sure if it had soy in it. So I’m not sure if that is what is causing egg intolerance for me or not.

      Reply
  6. Hello! I’m trying to find a good cooking spray that is soy free, preferably coconut. I cook for someone with a severe gluten / soy / dairy allergy (they can eat very few things). Right now I use pam coconut oil spray, but often times I find cans that contain soy. Any ideas? Please and thank you!!!

    Reply
  7. I thought I was doing so good on being Soy free, until I started reading labels again. Oh my goodness it is in everything. I am allergic to Soy, Malt(also in everything) and bananas. So I can have eggs and dairy(thank goodness) Thank you for helping with recipes and brands. Bless you.

    Reply
  8. Hello I’m navigating the Celaic world as I react to soy amd corn as they are the prolamin grains as are wheat barley and rye etc. Are you aware of a soy free brand of coconut oil?

    Reply
  9. I am searching for some soy free bread for my granddaughter who is extremely allergic to soy. I tried to check out Alpine Bakery but can’t find where it is located. Love your sight and thanks for the tips for cooking in kitchen.

    Reply
    • Hi Karon, thanks so much for your kind words! We’ve had the Alpine Bakery bread and really enjoy it, it can be tough to find sometimes. They have a store locator on their website so you can search for stores in your area that carry it. If it’s not carried near you, you can get some online on their shop or on Amazon. Silver Hills bread is another great one we’ve used that is soy free. I hope that helps!

      Reply

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