Incidental: I don’t care unusually much about evangelizing vegetarianism, but I happen to like to talk about food and most of what I know about it is vegetarianism-specialized, so if people are curious about practicalities I am happy to answer questions about what vegetarians eat and how it can be yummy.
I’m interested! I became a vegetarian about 4 months ago, shortly after I started doing my own cooking. My abilities are basically limited to pasta, salads, mushrooms in sandwiches or tortilla wraps, and lots more pasta. To learn recipes, Youtube videos were my main sources. I just haven’t gotten around to searching for vegetarian specific foods. What are some more options out there?
Not to knock pasta (and I recommend my signature sauce, as well as putting artichokes through the blender and adding them to cream sauces for pasta), but I’m more of a soup fan. Bean soup, veggie soup (here’s one way to do veggie soup), eggdrop soup, chowder (clam if you eat seafood, broccoli or corn if you don’t), polenta leaf soup, miso soup.
There’s also more things you can put in sandwiches besides mushrooms. I like Tofurkey, but even if you don’t, here are things I put on bread (all of these things include cheese, but you could omit it if you aren’t a huge fan of cheese):
Panfried tofu slices, spinach sauteed with cheese, hummus
Goat cheese, avocado slices, over-easy egg with dill and cayenne
Particularly copious amounts of cheese (melted), with optional hummus, avocado, onion slices
Fried zucchini and eggplant slices, avocado, hummus, fresh mozzarella
Minced garlic, basil leaves, fresh mozzarella
In most of the above cases I make the sandwiches open-faced, and fry them in butter to crisp them up (the last I put in the toaster oven with olive oil, and add the basil and mozzarella after they come out toasty).
Many veggies are lovely roasted. For pretty much all of them, you cut them into bites, put them on an oil-spritzed baking pan, and put them in a 400º oven for twenty minutes. This works for several kinds of squash, asparagus, broccoli, potatoes, etc. You can eat roasted veggies by themselves, or put them in omelets or your pasta or whatever.
I go on Foodgawker for inspiration. For advanced food-related fun, learn to deep fry things—I use my wok and spider skimmer, I don’t usually bother with a thermometer and just flick little bits of whatever I’m cooking to see how it reacts, and then I filter the oil for reuse with paper towels and a funnel.
I recommend getting familiar with chickpeas and tofu. They are both very cheap, very filling, and very nutritious (chickpeas in particular, once you learn how to reconstitute the dried ones). Experimenting with recipes that involve those ingredients is definitely a good idea. Learning to cook quinoa and rice is another helpful skill (wild rice is also nutritious and filling, and quinoa offers a complete protein). Working with those four ingredients and mixing in other vegetables, spices, mushrooms, sauces, etc will offer a very wide range of delicious and nutritious foods that you can make as a baseline.
You can also look into the dishes of different cultures that have vegetarian traditions. For example, Indian food has a very large range of interesting vegetarian dishes. So does Taiwan, and other strongly Buddhist-influenced cultures. In Japan, Buddhism-inspired vegetarian food is referred to as “Shojin-ryouri”, so if you like Japanese food, you might look up some shojin recipes. Those are just some examples =)
Tofu is a good choice, and can be used in many ways. One secret to tofu is to pay attention to the amount of water in the tofu, as that seriously changes the way it tastes, feels, and acts in dishes. For example, when you are making a stew with tofu, such as the spicy and delicious Korean soup kimchi jiggae, you probably want to choose silken tofu, which is soft and will interact well with the rich broth. But if you are making something like McFoo, a tofu sandwich where you marinate the tofu in select spices until it tastes like junk food, then you want a firm and chewy tofu. You can achieve the latter by pressing your tofu for an hour (there are special things to do this, but a towel, cutting boards, and a brick does just fine). You can make it even firmer and more textured by freezing it first, so most of my tofu goes right into the freezer until I need it.
There are also a few veg-specific things that you almost certainly have never had, such as TVP: textured vegetable protein. Despite the unappetizing sci-fi name, it’s actually an amazing thing to include in your diet. The trick to learning to love and use it is not to make the sad mistake of just pretending it’s meat. Most fake meat things don’t taste anything like meat, but instead have a rank and lingering chemical taste and overwhelming profile of salt and sugar, as they try to mimic what you might have liked about meat. TVP and other decent meat substitutes are different, and they just taste good without trying to taste like meat. So TVP chili is hearty and rich and has a great mouthfeel, giving you that chewiness and resistance that’s part of what makes meat good, but it doesn’t try to ape meat.
Other things you can make: veggie shepherd’s pie (lentils and veggies for the filling), pumpkin mac and cheese (add shredded pumpkin when making mac and cheese; if you use a sharp cheese the tastes blend amazingly), filo-wrapped spinach and veggies (you can buy prepared filo dough), loaded baked potatoes, pizza, calzones, quiches, grilled cheese and chard sandwiches, and lots of variations on curries and stews and things.
If you do not, then question: what is the best non-eggs/dairy solution to desserts? That is, what would you substitute in e.g. pastry cream, whipped cream, meringue, cakes, pastry dough, etc.? Is there some general solution, or is it handled on a case-by-case basis?
(If you do eat eggs/dairy, disregard this question.)
I am not Alicorn, but I also like talking about delicious food and I do not eat eggs and dairy. Unfortunately, there is no general solution to the egg/dairy substitution problem, especially for the eggs end of it.
There are some things I just don’t try to adapt: meringue, pastry cream, and whipped cream fall more-or-less into this category. I have had delicious dairy-free versions of whipped cream that seem to have been based on the fatty part of coconut milk, but I haven’t made any myself.
There are some substitutions that are easy and consistent. In baking cakes, cookies, and similar things, you can usually use any unsweetened soy or nut milk 1:1 for milk, and use margarine in place of butter, or mild flavored vegetable oil in place of melted butter. It is easiest to get good results if your recipe is for spice or chocolate cake, or is otherwise meant to taste like something other than butter, as even the best non-dairy butter substitutes do not taste quite like the real thing. Eggs are a slightly harder thing to substitute for, so for a really easy experience, go for a recipe that does not use them; sometimes these are “light” cakes or recipes written when food was expensive or rationed.
Eggs, even in baking where they are non-obvious in the final product, can be tricky to substitute for because they do so many things. If the eggs are mainly adjusting the consistency of the batter or dough, you can substitute for 1 egg with 1⁄4 cup of soft silken tofu , applesauce, or soy yogurt, or anything of a similar texture that you think would taste good. If I expect the egg to actually do some work on helping the rising process, I use 1⁄4 cup of the liquid from the recipe or of soy milk, plus 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed or 1 tsp ground psyllium husk. If there are more than 1 or 2 eggs called for, I re-evaluate whether I want to use this recipe (things that are supposed to get flavor from eggs, or that use eggs in complicated ways, like with yolks and whites separated, are beyond my skill level to adapt), and if I still want to, I use some combination of the substitutions available to me, to avoid the food tasting heavily of flax or applesauce when I didn’t intend that.
I was, in fact, largely thinking of recipes where the butter, eggs, cream, etc. are doing a lot of the flavor and texture work. It sounds like that’s something that is lost in an eggs/dairy free diet. This is valuable information.
Next question: would you be able to recommend a good source of dessert recipes that make the most of veg*an limitations on ingredients (rather than attempting to imperfectly substitute for eggs/dairy/etc.)?
(My motivation for these questions, by the way, is that I regularly bake desserts for my friends, and I’d like to be able to make sure that any people of my acquaintance who have veg*an dietary limitations don’t feel left out.)
There seem to be a lot of vegan dessert cookbooks out there these days, but of course they are of varying quality. My personal favorites are by Isa Chandra Moskowitz; the link goes to the Desserts category of her blog, so you can see if you like her style.
One really specific recipe that I found surprising, in terms of successfully replacing a food that depends heavily on dairy, is this chocolate mousse. The other creamy food it is easy to successfully replace milk in is pudding; a blancmange (aka Jello cook’n’serve) will work fine with soymilk or with a thick enough nut milk. (Rice milk in particular is thin enough that you have to adjust the ratios or cooking time to get it to set properly.)
Glancing quickly at the chocolate mousse recipe, something occurred to me: how do you deal with vegan ingredients being more expensive than non-vegan ones? For instance, vegan chocolate is way pricier around here than regular chocolate. Maple syrup is VERY expensive (is imitation syrup vegan?).
I tend to figure that price increase on individual ingredients is compensated for by the fact that avoiding animal products encourages me to buy food in an earlier state of processing, which tends to be less expensive. Also, some aspects of a vegetarian or vegan diet are less expensive than the alternative; for instance, protein from dried beans is often cheaper than protein from meat. I have never found groceries a problematically large portion of my budget.
I think imitation syrup is usually high fructose corn syrup with colors and flavors added, so in most cases it is probably vegan. I’m not sure it would taste good in this recipe, but you could experiment.
I do eat eggs and dairy—and lots of ’em—but I have a really good vegan chocolate cake recipe which I will paste below. Churros are also vegan and delicious, and they’re not really hard to make if you know how to deep-fry. Direct substitution for dairy ingredients is mostly disappointing, although coconut products can do some neat things and coconut oil often substitutes straight across with butter.
1 1⁄2 c flour 1 tsp baking soda 1 c sugar 1⁄4 c cocoa or carob powder 1⁄2 tsp salt 1 tablespoon white vinegar 1 tsp vanilla 1⁄3 c canola oil 1 c water
Preheat oven to 350º. Mix the dry ingredients in an 8″ square pan. Add the wet ingredients and stir well, making sure the edges and corners of the pan are not omitted. When the batter is smooth and incorporated, bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
A meal plan that provides over 3,000 calories begins with 1 cup of cooked quinoa topped with1/4 cup raisins, 1 oz. toasted almonds, 1 tbsp. honey and 1 cup hemp milk. For lunch, have 2 cups of whole wheat pasta tossed with 1 tbsp. olive oil, 1 cup white beans and sautéed kale. Dinner might include 6 oz. of firm tofu stir fried with broccoli, soy sauce, 1 oz. cashews and served over 1 cup brown rice. Snack on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made with whole grain bread, 2 tbsp. peanut butter and all-fruit spread; ½ cup of granola with soy milk and a smoothie made by blending a frozen banana with mangos, flaxseed meal, almond butter and coconut water.
I don’t have this problem with most any food so I’m not sure what exactly might cause it, but if you find that you have this problem with vegetarian food and not with meat, I’d try heavy stuff like cheese omelets, preferred unmeats with nice sauces on them, maybe bean stew.
If you’re having issues with your hunger response, it’s almost certainly because you’ve simply eliminated meat from the meal, without replacing it with something nutritionally equal. Your hunger response is mediated by a number of food chemicals, which you’ve like never had to notice before because meat provides the appropriate ones automatically,
Solving it is easy—just eat protein (nuts, beans, etc) and fat (nuts, oil, peanut butter, etc.). That’ll hit you with the right stuff to replace what you’re losing with meat, and keep your stomach’s brain happy because it’s receiving the right chemicals.
People too often think vegetarianism is just a light salad at every meal. >_<
It could be that the vegetarian stuff you are eating doesn’t have much protein in it. Or that the protein source doesn’t have all the amino acids. There is certainly vegetarian stuff that does have these things, it just takes more knowledge and meal design that for meat diets.
Protein powder can also be helpful for vegetarians (and everyone). I recommend pea protein powder.
Incidental: I don’t care unusually much about evangelizing vegetarianism, but I happen to like to talk about food and most of what I know about it is vegetarianism-specialized, so if people are curious about practicalities I am happy to answer questions about what vegetarians eat and how it can be yummy.
I’m interested! I became a vegetarian about 4 months ago, shortly after I started doing my own cooking. My abilities are basically limited to pasta, salads, mushrooms in sandwiches or tortilla wraps, and lots more pasta. To learn recipes, Youtube videos were my main sources. I just haven’t gotten around to searching for vegetarian specific foods. What are some more options out there?
Not to knock pasta (and I recommend my signature sauce, as well as putting artichokes through the blender and adding them to cream sauces for pasta), but I’m more of a soup fan. Bean soup, veggie soup (here’s one way to do veggie soup), eggdrop soup, chowder (clam if you eat seafood, broccoli or corn if you don’t), polenta leaf soup, miso soup.
There’s also more things you can put in sandwiches besides mushrooms. I like Tofurkey, but even if you don’t, here are things I put on bread (all of these things include cheese, but you could omit it if you aren’t a huge fan of cheese):
Panfried tofu slices, spinach sauteed with cheese, hummus
Hummus, avocado, shredded cheddar, cucumber slices, sprouts, lettuce
Goat cheese, avocado slices, over-easy egg with dill and cayenne
Particularly copious amounts of cheese (melted), with optional hummus, avocado, onion slices
Fried zucchini and eggplant slices, avocado, hummus, fresh mozzarella
Minced garlic, basil leaves, fresh mozzarella
In most of the above cases I make the sandwiches open-faced, and fry them in butter to crisp them up (the last I put in the toaster oven with olive oil, and add the basil and mozzarella after they come out toasty).
Many veggies are lovely roasted. For pretty much all of them, you cut them into bites, put them on an oil-spritzed baking pan, and put them in a 400º oven for twenty minutes. This works for several kinds of squash, asparagus, broccoli, potatoes, etc. You can eat roasted veggies by themselves, or put them in omelets or your pasta or whatever.
I go on Foodgawker for inspiration. For advanced food-related fun, learn to deep fry things—I use my wok and spider skimmer, I don’t usually bother with a thermometer and just flick little bits of whatever I’m cooking to see how it reacts, and then I filter the oil for reuse with paper towels and a funnel.
I recommend getting familiar with chickpeas and tofu. They are both very cheap, very filling, and very nutritious (chickpeas in particular, once you learn how to reconstitute the dried ones). Experimenting with recipes that involve those ingredients is definitely a good idea. Learning to cook quinoa and rice is another helpful skill (wild rice is also nutritious and filling, and quinoa offers a complete protein). Working with those four ingredients and mixing in other vegetables, spices, mushrooms, sauces, etc will offer a very wide range of delicious and nutritious foods that you can make as a baseline.
You can also look into the dishes of different cultures that have vegetarian traditions. For example, Indian food has a very large range of interesting vegetarian dishes. So does Taiwan, and other strongly Buddhist-influenced cultures. In Japan, Buddhism-inspired vegetarian food is referred to as “Shojin-ryouri”, so if you like Japanese food, you might look up some shojin recipes. Those are just some examples =)
Tofu is a good choice, and can be used in many ways. One secret to tofu is to pay attention to the amount of water in the tofu, as that seriously changes the way it tastes, feels, and acts in dishes. For example, when you are making a stew with tofu, such as the spicy and delicious Korean soup kimchi jiggae, you probably want to choose silken tofu, which is soft and will interact well with the rich broth. But if you are making something like McFoo, a tofu sandwich where you marinate the tofu in select spices until it tastes like junk food, then you want a firm and chewy tofu. You can achieve the latter by pressing your tofu for an hour (there are special things to do this, but a towel, cutting boards, and a brick does just fine). You can make it even firmer and more textured by freezing it first, so most of my tofu goes right into the freezer until I need it.
There are also a few veg-specific things that you almost certainly have never had, such as TVP: textured vegetable protein. Despite the unappetizing sci-fi name, it’s actually an amazing thing to include in your diet. The trick to learning to love and use it is not to make the sad mistake of just pretending it’s meat. Most fake meat things don’t taste anything like meat, but instead have a rank and lingering chemical taste and overwhelming profile of salt and sugar, as they try to mimic what you might have liked about meat. TVP and other decent meat substitutes are different, and they just taste good without trying to taste like meat. So TVP chili is hearty and rich and has a great mouthfeel, giving you that chewiness and resistance that’s part of what makes meat good, but it doesn’t try to ape meat.
Other things you can make: veggie shepherd’s pie (lentils and veggies for the filling), pumpkin mac and cheese (add shredded pumpkin when making mac and cheese; if you use a sharp cheese the tastes blend amazingly), filo-wrapped spinach and veggies (you can buy prepared filo dough), loaded baked potatoes, pizza, calzones, quiches, grilled cheese and chard sandwiches, and lots of variations on curries and stews and things.
Do you eat eggs and dairy?
If you do not, then question: what is the best non-eggs/dairy solution to desserts? That is, what would you substitute in e.g. pastry cream, whipped cream, meringue, cakes, pastry dough, etc.? Is there some general solution, or is it handled on a case-by-case basis?
(If you do eat eggs/dairy, disregard this question.)
I am not Alicorn, but I also like talking about delicious food and I do not eat eggs and dairy. Unfortunately, there is no general solution to the egg/dairy substitution problem, especially for the eggs end of it.
There are some things I just don’t try to adapt: meringue, pastry cream, and whipped cream fall more-or-less into this category. I have had delicious dairy-free versions of whipped cream that seem to have been based on the fatty part of coconut milk, but I haven’t made any myself.
There are some substitutions that are easy and consistent. In baking cakes, cookies, and similar things, you can usually use any unsweetened soy or nut milk 1:1 for milk, and use margarine in place of butter, or mild flavored vegetable oil in place of melted butter. It is easiest to get good results if your recipe is for spice or chocolate cake, or is otherwise meant to taste like something other than butter, as even the best non-dairy butter substitutes do not taste quite like the real thing. Eggs are a slightly harder thing to substitute for, so for a really easy experience, go for a recipe that does not use them; sometimes these are “light” cakes or recipes written when food was expensive or rationed.
Eggs, even in baking where they are non-obvious in the final product, can be tricky to substitute for because they do so many things. If the eggs are mainly adjusting the consistency of the batter or dough, you can substitute for 1 egg with 1⁄4 cup of soft silken tofu , applesauce, or soy yogurt, or anything of a similar texture that you think would taste good. If I expect the egg to actually do some work on helping the rising process, I use 1⁄4 cup of the liquid from the recipe or of soy milk, plus 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed or 1 tsp ground psyllium husk. If there are more than 1 or 2 eggs called for, I re-evaluate whether I want to use this recipe (things that are supposed to get flavor from eggs, or that use eggs in complicated ways, like with yolks and whites separated, are beyond my skill level to adapt), and if I still want to, I use some combination of the substitutions available to me, to avoid the food tasting heavily of flax or applesauce when I didn’t intend that.
Thank you for your response!
I was, in fact, largely thinking of recipes where the butter, eggs, cream, etc. are doing a lot of the flavor and texture work. It sounds like that’s something that is lost in an eggs/dairy free diet. This is valuable information.
Next question: would you be able to recommend a good source of dessert recipes that make the most of veg*an limitations on ingredients (rather than attempting to imperfectly substitute for eggs/dairy/etc.)?
(My motivation for these questions, by the way, is that I regularly bake desserts for my friends, and I’d like to be able to make sure that any people of my acquaintance who have veg*an dietary limitations don’t feel left out.)
There seem to be a lot of vegan dessert cookbooks out there these days, but of course they are of varying quality. My personal favorites are by Isa Chandra Moskowitz; the link goes to the Desserts category of her blog, so you can see if you like her style.
One really specific recipe that I found surprising, in terms of successfully replacing a food that depends heavily on dairy, is this chocolate mousse. The other creamy food it is easy to successfully replace milk in is pudding; a blancmange (aka Jello cook’n’serve) will work fine with soymilk or with a thick enough nut milk. (Rice milk in particular is thin enough that you have to adjust the ratios or cooking time to get it to set properly.)
Thanks for the links, I will check them out!
Glancing quickly at the chocolate mousse recipe, something occurred to me: how do you deal with vegan ingredients being more expensive than non-vegan ones? For instance, vegan chocolate is way pricier around here than regular chocolate. Maple syrup is VERY expensive (is imitation syrup vegan?).
I tend to figure that price increase on individual ingredients is compensated for by the fact that avoiding animal products encourages me to buy food in an earlier state of processing, which tends to be less expensive. Also, some aspects of a vegetarian or vegan diet are less expensive than the alternative; for instance, protein from dried beans is often cheaper than protein from meat. I have never found groceries a problematically large portion of my budget.
I think imitation syrup is usually high fructose corn syrup with colors and flavors added, so in most cases it is probably vegan. I’m not sure it would taste good in this recipe, but you could experiment.
The last category you mention is basically “eggs used as an emulsifier”—so other emulsifiers should also work.
I do eat eggs and dairy—and lots of ’em—but I have a really good vegan chocolate cake recipe which I will paste below. Churros are also vegan and delicious, and they’re not really hard to make if you know how to deep-fry. Direct substitution for dairy ingredients is mostly disappointing, although coconut products can do some neat things and coconut oil often substitutes straight across with butter.
1 1⁄2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 c sugar
1⁄4 c cocoa or carob powder
1⁄2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1⁄3 c canola oil
1 c water
Preheat oven to 350º. Mix the dry ingredients in an 8″ square pan. Add the wet ingredients and stir well, making sure the edges and corners of the pan are not omitted. When the batter is smooth and incorporated, bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
What vegetarian things can I eat that won’t leave me hungry an hour later?
I don’t find that this is ever a problem for me. YMMV, but I’d suggest eating calorie-dense foods such as nuts, beans, grains, and fatty foods.
This LiveStrong article has a sample meal plan:
I don’t have this problem with most any food so I’m not sure what exactly might cause it, but if you find that you have this problem with vegetarian food and not with meat, I’d try heavy stuff like cheese omelets, preferred unmeats with nice sauces on them, maybe bean stew.
If you’re having issues with your hunger response, it’s almost certainly because you’ve simply eliminated meat from the meal, without replacing it with something nutritionally equal. Your hunger response is mediated by a number of food chemicals, which you’ve like never had to notice before because meat provides the appropriate ones automatically,
Solving it is easy—just eat protein (nuts, beans, etc) and fat (nuts, oil, peanut butter, etc.). That’ll hit you with the right stuff to replace what you’re losing with meat, and keep your stomach’s brain happy because it’s receiving the right chemicals.
People too often think vegetarianism is just a light salad at every meal. >_<
It could be that the vegetarian stuff you are eating doesn’t have much protein in it. Or that the protein source doesn’t have all the amino acids. There is certainly vegetarian stuff that does have these things, it just takes more knowledge and meal design that for meat diets.
Protein powder can also be helpful for vegetarians (and everyone). I recommend pea protein powder.