Trying a vegan food now: Morningstar Farms’ Sweet BBQ Riblets. No way you’d confuse them for real beef short ribs or pork ribs based on texture alone, let alone flavor. About all I taste, in fact, is the barbecue sauce.
But they’re not actually all that bad if you take them for what they are – processed plants with sauce – rather than what they try and fail to imitate. I don’t know if I’ll buy them again (and I have half the package left over to reheat for another meal), but with a couple of sides (buttered mashed sweet potato and a pasta with tomato sauce, chicken, and mixed vegetables) they’ll do for supper.
No way I’m going wholly vegan, though, or any other variety of vegetarian. I may not eat much critter-based protein, but I’m not giving it up, just varying my intake of that food group. If any of you have suggestions for a better vegan protein, let me know. Oh, and I rarely cook, so making stuff from scratch is right out; I’d be looking for packaged food I can zap in the microwave. Yes, I know. Don’t judge!
My recommendation is not to eat foods trying to imitate something else, because you’re always going to be disappointed, especially if you’ve already tasted the thing being imitated. There are plenty of foods that just happen not to involve meats. I think some cuisines in particular (Indian, Italian, Chinese, etc) in particular have lots of dishes that aren’t centered around meat.
Yeah, I tried a lot of meat substitute products (mostly out of curiosity) and they were mostly pretty poor substitutes. On the other hand, there are plenty of really lovely vegetarian and vegan recipes that just celebrate ingredients that don’t happen to be meat. Lentils, in particular, are pretty awesome really.
The other thing I do quite a lot now is to extend a meat-based dish with lots more veg than I used to - in particular, dishes based on minced(ground) beef are easy to extend with lentils, grains, diced and grated root vegetables, diced courgette(zucchini), etc - and they often end up tastier and more interesting than a meat-centric version of the same - particularly things like pasta sauces.
But if you’re not cooking for yourself much, there’s almost certain to be an independent vegan cafe or restaurant or two fairly close - there are a couple near me that are tucked away in little back streets and they make amazing and delicious food that just happens to be made from stuff that isn’t animals.
I don’t cook and rely on whatever I can find. I am not a strict vegetarian but try to keep meat products to a minimum. That’s not always possible as I also hate to shop. I also don’t eat out very often or order food.
I’ve tried some of the plant based Marie Callenders plant based chicken pot pies and one of their vegetarian broccoli pot pies. They were good but difficult to find.
I survive on cheese, nuts, beans, hummus, salad, soup and some turkey lunch meat sandwiches.
Tofu can shockingly be good. My beloved does a dish with noodles, garlic, bok choi, and tofu. It is soooo good.
The Impossible Burger tastes like real beef. It doesn’t taste like good beef. But, it does taste like beef. Other than Impossible Meat, every meat substitute I have ever tried sucks. Black bean burgers are usually very tasty. They do not taste like meat nor do they try to.
We eat at a lot Indian places. They have a lot of vegetarian dishes and usually some vegan dishes as well.
I am not a vegetarian. I do not mix milk and meat. So, it is just easier to order fish (not considered meat under Jewish law) or a vegetarian dish. I became unable to digest red meat years ago. I miss it terribly. The last time I ordered an Impossible burger at a certain local restaurant, they served me real beef. It looked fine under the dim lighting. It was very savory. But I thought that was just the skill of the chef. Roughly 48 hours later, I was hit with very painful and messy symptoms.
I now double check to make sure I am actually served Impossible Burger.
Just checked, and the nearest Trader Joe’s is a bit too much of a drive for me. OTOH there’s a Whole Foods within easy driving range as well as three large supermarkets, so I can do some exploring. I can’t try anything Indian, though, at least not curried; there’s something in that spice mix that viciously does not agree with me.
Agreed on not trying to build a vegetarian or vegan diet around meat substitutes. Although I’m not a vegetarian I’ve long been cultivating a palette for vegetable dishes after basically refusing to eat vegetables (other than potatoes and fruit) in childhood, and my go to is Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone (there is a newer version but the original can be found cheaply) because it provides a lot of broad guidance on how to cook vegetarian dishes. If there is a particular cuisine that you favor (‘Mediterranean’ and Italian have very accessible and flavorable options; I’ve never gotten into curries but of course many regional cuisines of India are largely vegetarian by nature) you can focus on that, too, but the general principles of how to select and cook different types of vegetables will allow you to avoid the trap of defaulting to rice and bean dishes.
I can’t help you with vegan other than to say that you’ll have more success if you dive in the shallow end first and don’t be dogmatic, and give yourself time to find what really works for you and what doesn’t (i.e. vegan ‘cheese’). And don’t assume that just because something is ‘vegan’ that it is by default healthy; in fact, a lot of those vegan meat substitutes are highly processed and full of unhealthy levels of sodium, potassium, and other preservatives, as are most frozen meals. Shoot for fresh fruits and vegetables, and make sure you are getting adequate proteins and fats, and not just loading up exclusively on carbohydrate-rich foods.
This is excellent advice. I do all the cooking for my family, and wherever I can, I scale back the meat and substitute non-meat additions as above. When I put enchiladas (for example) in front of my kids, I tell them it’s a chicken filling, but it’s actually mostly vegetable with a meat-broth-based sauce for that “satisfaction” element.
Which leads me to another general point on vegan and vegetarian food: You can’t assume it’s actually healthy just because it doesn’t have meat. A while back, we were visiting vegan friends in San Francisco, and they took us to their favorite vegan restaurant downtown, a place that at the time had a national reputation for delicious vegan cooking. (I don’t remember the name offhand, but I could probably track it down.) It was, indeed, quite delicious — but the reason it was delicious is that everything was drenched in fatty flavored oils or adorned with fatty nut butters. Yes, plant-based lipids are broadly preferable to and healthier than animal fats. But nobody would argue eating an entire jar of peanut butter for lunch would be a good idea, and the plates at this “gourmet” vegan place verged on that level of overkill, clearly because they wanted their diners to leave happy and then come back and spend money again.
So if you’re going to restaurants and buying prepared foods in the vegan and/or vegetarian categories, be cautious that they aren’t cheating the balance of mouthfeel and satisfaction (in order to win repeat business) over the value of the nutrition you’re supposed to be getting by eating this way.
Thank you - the other thing I do quite a lot now is to fill a roasting tray with root vegetables, then balance a few chicken portions on top - then roast (ie bake) this in the oven until the chicken is crispy - the juices and fats from the chicken baste the roast vegetables and make them really tasty - this way, a meal often has a smaller ratio of meat to vegetables on the plate, but is still just as filling and tasty and satisfying. Meat is typically the expensive part of the meal, so this saves money too.
Appreciate we’re kind of off-topic for the OP’s question though, which is specifically about contexts other than home cooking.
A lot of poverty cuisine, especially from around Asia, is centered around the idea of using very small amounts of meat strategically to improve the palatability of vegetable dishes. IMHO, this is a much more sustainable approach than going 100% vegetarian, especially if it’s for animal welfare reasons since many of the animal products used tend to be discarded waste products in Western cultures.
Try sauteeing some simple greens with garlic and salt side by side in vegetable oil and lard and see how much tastier the lard version is. Slip a few chicken’s feet into vegetable soup and it’ll add an incredibly richness and body the soup was missing. Try making dishes like Mapo Tofu the original Chinese way where the meat is used more as a condiment to season the dish. Try using more cured and smoked pork products which can perfume a dish even when used in small quantities. Use dried seafood like tiny dried shrimp or sambals with shrimp paste in a veggie filling to add a briny flavor.
Learning a repertoire of tricks like these can greatly increase your veggie consumption without ever having the feeling of being deprived that meat isn’t the center of the plate.
Sure, which is why I wanted to bring up my experience at that one vegan restaurant as a caution that a meatless diet is not ipso facto a healthy one (as Stranger also described).
(For the record, I dug into my email archives, and the restaurant was called Millennium. This was back in 2012, before they moved to a new location under new ownership. Maybe the current incarnation offers healthier dishes; I wouldn’t know. But at the time, it certainly felt like my palate was being bribed with unhealthy richness.)
I live around the corner from Millennium but can only afford to go there on special occasions. I don’t think anyone would mistake their food for healthy!
“Healthy” and “Vegan” are completely independent concepts! The OP doesn’t mention motivation for trying vegan options, but it sounds like they may simply be trying to shift away from the environmental or ethical costs of meat.
I agree 1000%. I am a dedicated omnivore, but if I was to decide to become vegan I would lean heavily on vegan Indian cuisine. We used to be friends with a couple who were vegan, and when we’d have them over for dinner I’d throw down on a vegan Indian feast, with stuff like Chana Masala and Baingan Bharta. My wife still asks me to make Baingan Bharta on a semi-regular basis.
The two vegan friends we were visiting who took us there certainly seemed to think it was healthy, and claimed superior well-being for eating like that.
But then they were independently wealthy people who were filling their days “working” part-time as “holistic dog walkers,” so… y’know.