Cooking without coconut: what to use instead of the milk, the oil and the flour

A recipe doesn't want coconut. It wants what coconut does: fat, body, a certain sweetness, something solid at room temperature. Work out which job it is doing and most recipes survive without it.

Every substitute here is somebody's allergen

Dairy, soy, tree nuts and wheat all appear below, and each is marked where it does. About 40 percent of children with a food allergy have more than one [1]. If you are swapping coconut for a nut or soy product you haven't eaten before, that is a question for your allergist first.

Coconut milk and coconut cream

What it is doing: supplying fat and body. Canned coconut milk is about 21% fat and coconut cream about 35% [2]. For comparison, heavy dairy cream is about 36%, half-and-half 11.5% and evaporated milk 7.6% [2]. Brands of coconut milk vary a lot, too: a test kitchen that compared them found the fat content "ranged quite considerably" [3].

So the nearest thing to coconut cream is dairy cream, and the nearest thing to coconut milk is cream let down with water or stock.

In curries, soups and stews:

Instead of coconut milk	Contains	Worth knowing
Dairy cream, thinned	dairy	Closest in richness. Half cream and half water or stock lands near coconut milk's fat content
Evaporated milk	dairy	Much leaner, so the dish will be thinner
Silken tofu, blended smooth	soy	A 12-ounce pack makes about 1½ cups of purée [4]
Cashew or other nut cream	tree nuts	Works well, for those who aren't allergic to tree nuts [4]
Yoghurt	dairy	Curdles when heated hard: heat makes the whey proteins seize, and yoghurt has little fat to protect them [5]. Stir it in at the end, off the heat

In baking, coconut milk is mostly fat plus liquid, and it can be replaced as exactly that: for 1 cup of coconut milk, use ¼ cup of oil and ¾ cup of another liquid [4].

For coconut cream, extra-firm silken tofu is a thick one-for-one stand-in, and a thick nut cream works too, though it won't whip [4].

Coconut oil

What it is doing: being a fat that is solid in a cool kitchen. Coconut oil melts at about 78 °F (25.6 °C) [6], which is why bakers use it the way they use butter or shortening.

Where the recipe uses it solid (pastry, biscuits, cakes): butter, lard or shortening. King Arthur Baking treats lard, shortening and coconut oil as interchangeable one-for-one with butter in bread, pie crust, pastry and cake [7], so the swap runs the same in reverse. Butter is only about 80% fat, with 16 to 18% water [8], so expect a slightly different texture.
Where the recipe melts it (brownies, granola, frying): any cooking oil you like [4].
For no-bake treats that need to set: cocoa butter [4].

Sources don't agree on the exact ratio between butter and coconut oil, so start one-for-one and adjust.

A caution about shortening. Palm shortening behaves much like coconut oil [4], and it comes from a different plant: whether palm matters to you is its own question. And a tub that says only "vegetable shortening" or manteca vegetal hasn't told you which plant it is. The label words that leave it out.

Coconut flour

This is the one that can't be swapped.

Coconut flour is extremely high in fibre and absorbs a great deal of liquid [9]. Recipes written for it use tiny amounts and a lot of eggs: about two eggs for every quarter cup [10]. King Arthur Baking is blunt about it: you can't substitute coconut flour one-for-one with any other flour, "it simply won't work" [10].

So don't convert. Find a version of the recipe written for ordinary flour, or for whichever flour you can eat. We found no reliable ratio for going the other way.

Shredded and desiccated coconut

Usually it can simply be left out, or replaced with something that adds the same kind of interest: seeds, chocolate chips, chopped nuts (tree nuts, where that's a problem) [4].

Rolled oats are the obvious swap in granola and biscuits, with one difference to plan for: coconut releases oil as it bakes while oats absorb moisture, so the result comes out drier [4]. A little extra fat or liquid makes up for it.

Coconut sugar

The easy one. Brown sugar, muscovado or date sugar, measured by weight [11].

Coconut aminos

Coconut aminos is made by ageing the sap of the coconut palm, and it tastes sweeter and less intense than soy sauce [12]. Soy sauce and tamari are the usual stand-ins. Both are soy, and most soy sauce contains wheat as well. Since they are stronger, start with less and taste.

We found no authoritative ratio, and no allergy organisation saying whether sap products affect people with a coconut allergy. That second question is for your allergist.

Coconut butter, whipped cream and yoghurt

Coconut butter: a nut or seed butter usually does the job [4]. A seed butter sidesteps tree nuts.
Whipped topping: read the tub. Most dairy-free "whipped creams" are made with coconut [13]. Dairy cream, if you can have it, is the direct replacement.
Yoghurt: dairy, soy and oat yoghurts exist; "plant-based" on the front doesn't tell you which plant, so check the list.

The dishes that are coconut

Some recipes aren't using coconut as an ingredient. They are built on it.

Caribbean arroz con coco gets its colour and flavour from titoté: coconut milk cooked down for about half an hour until the oil separates and the solids caramelise [14]. There is no cream or stock that does that. We looked for a published version of arroz con coco, or of rice and beans, made without coconut, and found none.

Rice cooked with something else is a good dish. It is a different dish. For these, the realistic answer is to cook something else at home and to ask before you order when you are out.

Foods to avoid · Eating out · Coconut and palm oil · The complete guide

Sources

FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education). “Facts and statistics.” foodallergy.org
USDA FoodData Central: coconut milk, canned · coconut cream. Dairy figures from the same database.
The Splendid Table with America's Test Kitchen. Coconut milk taste test, 2019. splendidtable.org
Go Dairy Free. How to substitute for coconut milk, coconut oil and more in recipes. godairyfree.org
America's Test Kitchen. On curdling in cultured dairy. americastestkitchen.com
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Nutrition Source. “Coconut oil.” nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu
King Arthur Baking. Guide to dairy-free baking, 2018. kingarthurbaking.com
King Arthur Baking. On butter in baking, 2016. kingarthurbaking.com
Bob's Red Mill. On baking with coconut flour. bobsredmill.com
King Arthur Baking. Gluten-free baking tips, 2015. kingarthurbaking.com
King Arthur Baking. Guide to types of sugar and when to substitute, 2023. kingarthurbaking.com
America's Test Kitchen. On liquid aminos and coconut aminos. americastestkitchen.com
Go Dairy Free. Dairy-free whipped cream guide. godairyfree.org
Dinho E. Arroz con coco y pasas. My Colombian Recipes. mycolombianrecipes.com

Educational only, not medical advice. Always confirm with your allergist.