10 Smart Substitutes For Hard-To-Find Grocery Store Ingredients

With a huge percentage of the population staying at home as the world weathers the coronavirus, there has been a massive increase in home cooking. If you’ve visited a grocery store or attempted to place an Instacart order recently, you’re probably familiar with the picked-over state of the shelves, butcher counters and produce sections as folks try to stock up on essentials.Unfortunately, this uptick in grocery shopping means that certain high-demand items are consistently challenging to find. And this list includes crucial staples like pasta, rice, flour and milk.Luckily, many of these hard-to-find items have easier-to-locate alternatives, which could be well worth a try if you’d rather avoid unnecessary supermarket stress. We asked a group of chefs and kitchen pros for their favorite under-the-radar ingredient substitutions, and they delivered with this list of 10 replacement suggestions.Pasta: Instead, try shirataki or rice noodlesPasta aisles are among the most ransacked grocery store sections right now, and if you’re in need of a box of ziti to pair with a jar of marinara or a homemade bolognese sauce, you may find yourself out of luck. However, chef and food writer Ariane Resnick advises shoppers to mosey over to the international foods section, where they can locate viable alternatives to typical wheat-based pastas. “Lately, I’ve found that wheat pasta is hard to get, but rice pasta, shirataki noodles and other alternative forms are available. Brown rice pasta cooks up very similarly to wheat. Note that it does not keep equally well ― it will dry out and needs to be reheated with liquid, unlike wheat pasta, which can be used cold in dishes like macaroni salad,” Resnick explained.angintaravichian via Getty ImagesRamen: Instead, use veggie noodlesSpiralized noodles made from zucchini (also known as “zoodles”) made a major splash among low-carb dieters over the past several years, and vegetable “pasta” is often suggested as a substitute for standard-issue spaghetti. That said, the flavor and texture of veggie noodles differs from that of wheat-based pastas, and these variations don’t always vibe with pasta sauces and prep techniques. But if you’re struggling to find packets of ramen in the supermarket, you’ll be glad to know that vegetable noodles fit into these seasoned soups quite harmoniously, according to executive chef Kenny Claxton of The Easterly Restaurant on St. Thomas. “[With a] spiralizer, food processor or mandolin, you can use a wide variety of vegetables from zucchini and squash to sweet potato or daikon radish to make veggie noodles. You can use chicken or vegetable stock as your broth base and add any assortment of seasonings that you wish, cooking your ‘noodles’ in the broth to add more flavor. As with your usual ramen, you can garnish with any variety of toppings, including a soft boiled egg, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, bacon, or nori. The veggie noodles are a healthy, gluten free alternative that can change up your ramen game,” Claxton said.And if you don’t feel like making them, many grocery stores will have pre-made noodles out of sweet potatoes, squash and zucchini available in the prepared foods section of your produce aisle.All-purpose flour: Instead, consider gluten-free flours, but not to excessIf we’ve l
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