this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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Would you like to go vegan and need advice?
If you're offering, im always looking for good cheese, yogurt or dairy substitutes
Honestly, I’ve stopped chasing substitutes a while ago. Giving up meat and dairy is going to be a lifestyle change, that’s why people struggle so much with it. You can’t expect to just sub in imitations and keep eating the same foods. They’re not close enough to fool anyone, and they’re usually expensive and unhealthy.
The best way eat vegan is to fill your diet with minimally processed legumes, grains, fruits, and vegetables. Learn to cook a few staple meals from cultural cuisines where animal products are expensive (most cultures outside US/Canada and Western Europe) and you’ll realize how much great food you can make with a few simple ingredients and one or two pots. A huge number of them fall into the same basic formula, so if you learn one, you can easily make them all. Plus, it’s much, much cheaper than eating meat.
I’m not vegan but I do eat 95% vegan because my wife is and I agreed to buy and cook solely vegan in the house. I come from a culture with plenty of (accidentally) vegan home cooking already, so it wasn’t hard at all. But those substitutes are gross to me. Apologies to those who like them.
Could you share some suggestions for the 1-2 pot recipes with a variation or two to demonstrate? I've started stocking up on oatmeal and frozen fruit, then frozen veggies that I season in the air fryer. Outside of that things like hummus, green bean casserole and chili are my go-tos. I'm not exactly a great cook but I'm trying to experiment more slowly replacing other simple shit like pizza rolls, bacon and eggs, etc. Especially if I can do large quantities to freeze and save leftovers
Sure. I posted the “formula” these recipes below:
Fry hard veggies in oil until soft - can be onions, leeks, carrots, celery, potatoes etc.
Add spices, soft veggies, and/or pastes and stir to form a sauce - tomatoes, peppers, garlic, ginger, etc.
Stir in your beans/chickpeas/lentils/peas. Most beans should be cooked, lentils and peas usually can be dry/raw.
Add water, bring to a boil, and simmer. Amount and time depends on if you want a soup, stew, or just some sauce.
Add leafy greens and anything that should be dissolved - spinach, kale, lemon, vinegar, sugar, cilantro etc.
So here is a really simple one I make at least once a week, as you can eat it hot or cold, with or without rice. It makes a great packed lunch. You can make the beans or chickpeas ahead of time or use a 30 oz can, but cooking them is much cheaper. Either way, make sure you rinse them off. I put in 1 cup dry beans/chickpeas (makes 3 cups cooked) in my Instant Pot with 4 cups water for 25 minutes for beans, 35 for chickpeas, instant release. Then I use the pot to cook the meal.
Also, you can chop and freeze most hard veggies (carrots, leeks, onions, celery, ginger, garlic). They aren’t as good as fresh, but it’s a lot more convenient if you have to cook after work.
This recipe is really flexible so I’ll just tell you what I do, but the ratios are all preference:
1 large onion, finely chopped
Equivalent amount of carrot, quarter slices
3 cups cooked pinto beans or chickpeas
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped or crushed
3 tablespoons tomato or red pepper paste (I use half of each but red pepper paste can be hard to find in US grocery stores)
Juice of 1 lemon or white vinegar
1.5 tablespoon sugar
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Optionally, bay leaves, paprika, and parsley
Step 1: frying hard veggies. Heat up a medium or large pot (stainless is best but any material will do) and add enough olive oil to fully cover the bottom and a bit more. It might be more oil than you think you’ll need. Fry your onions until soft.
Side note about onions: you can cook them quickly in 5-10 minutes at medium-high heat. They are ready when soft and translucent. But if you have the time and want a complex flavor in your dish, you can cook them for up to 20-30 minutes at low heat. Always salt them to help draw out the water.
Either way, add the carrots when the onions are almost done (2-3 minutes left).
Step 2: make the sauce. Add your garlic and let it cook a bit until fragrant. Add black pepper and optionally a couple of bay leaves and paprika. Stir for 30 seconds to let the spices bloom and then add your tomato/pepper paste and stir continuously until a sauce forms. About 1-2 minutes. The oil should be reddish.
Step 3: add the beans. Just stir them in and make sure they are covered in the sauce.
Step 4: water. Add 3 cups water (less if you’re in a hurry) and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
Step 5: anything that should be added to the water. Add the sugar and lemon/vinegar. This is really to taste, so you can add more when it’s almost done if it needs it. It should be just a little sweet and tangy. You can also add leafy greens like kale or spinach, but I don’t add them if I plan on eating it cold later.
Let it simmer until it’s a very beany stew (not a soup), but at the very least 10 minutes. It should be a little watery. Check the flavor and add salt, pepper, sugar, lemon/vinegar, or olive oil as needed. Parsley makes a great garnish.
This can be eaten hot or cold, with or without rice. Will keep about a week in the fridge.
I’ll reply below with a lentil soup recipe that’s more or less the same thing.
For lentil soup you need:
As much chopped leeks as you can handle. Should cover the bottom of the pot at least. Leeks are huge, cheap, delicious, and freeze really well chopped, so I always keep them stocked. You can use onions instead, but I think leeks are much better for soup.
2-3 medium carrots, quarter slices
2-3 celery, sliced
2-3 cloves garlic
2 cups dry/raw green or brown lentils or split green peas
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 cup pearled barley or orzo pasta (or other pasta/grain, or just use more lentils)
Half bunch kale leaves in bite size pieces
Extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1/2 lemon or white vinegar
Salt, pepper, paprika
Optionally, bay leaves and turmeric
Step 1: heat a pot with oil and cook your leeks, carrots, and celery until soft. Leeks cook a bit longer.
Step 2: add the spices and let them bloom. Add tomato paste and stir until sauce forms.
Step 3: stir in lentils/peas and barley/orzo.
Step 4: add 7 cups water (adjust to preference) and bring to a boil, then let simmer. Cook for 30-45 minutes (or 15-20 in pressure cooker) depending on the lentils/peas you picked. Lentils are done when they are just about bursting.
Step 5: add lemon and kale
Obviously, a lot of this is to taste. If you don’t have good fresh veggies, the broth can be a little flavorless. You can add a bit more lemon and salt, or bullion if it’s really bland. If you know the veggies aren’t great, just use more of them in the first step. You can also use less water.
You can broil the kale with a bit of olive oil and salt for 3-4 minutes until it’s crispy before adding to the soup. This will give it a less fibrous, more crunchy character.
I live in the US, so depending on where you live these may or may not be available to you.
Cheese for me depends on the application:
On a pizza, I like Miyokos liquid mozzarella. I'll often get a chain pizza with no cheese, add a little on top and bake for a bit.
Melted in a quesadilla, etc., I'll usually go for daiya.
Cold on something like a burrito bowl, I like Violife or Vevan. Violife also makes a great feta.
For parmesan and blue cheese dressing, I'll usually go with Follow Your Heart.
For cheese sauces and mac and cheese, I like to make cashew cheese sauce.
My favorite non dairy for drinking and baking is oat or soy, I just like to make sure it's not sweetened.
I started making my own yogurt in an instant pot with cheap Asian grocery store coconut milk and vegan cultures, and it's fantastic.
Hope this helps!
Over here all vegan cheese is violife or similar. It is not bad but lacks the cheesiness and the flavor is frankly a little weird - I suspect the coconut oil to be behind it but can't verify as all I have available is cockonut oil based :(
Well milk is easy. Just get soy milk or almond milk as a drop-in replacement. There's even weird ones like cashew milk. Depending on where you are at though that might be too expensive compared to dairy milk.
Oat milk is really good too and is usually cheaper than almond milk, at least where I live.
I normally prefer soy for flavor, with oat as a close second.
For nutritional value, I think soy is the top, followed by pea, and oat way behind.
For environmental impact/needs, I think soy and oat are also among the best.
Soy milk is a miracle food and we should embrace it.
Where I live, soy milk is less than half the price of cow boob milk. Perks of living in East Asia, I guess.
I bought a 936 mL (1/4 gallons) carton of soy milk today, and it was only about US$1.1 (NT$35). Very affordable.
Why does Taiwan sell soy milk in gallons?
They don't sell milk or soy milk in gallons. The soy milk I got was 936 mL. 936 mL is 0.2472 gallons, which just so happens to be close to a quarter gallon. A quarter gallon is closer to 946 mL.
When I wrote the previous comment, I actually thought that 936 mL was exactly 1/4 gallons, and it kind of surprised me. The tool I used to convert units rounded the result to 2 decimal places.
That’s even stranger! Do you have any idea why? Is there maybe a pre-metric system measurement that’s closer?
Or maybe soy milk is just 6.4% less dense than water and it’s a kilogram
I tried to look it up, but I couldn't find any convincing answers. I did find one answer saying it has to do with the milk's density, but the density is about 1.03 (both dairy and soy milk) and when you run the numbers you get that 936 mL is only 0.964 kg.
There is also no pre-metric units for volume, so that isn't it either. Also, some other milk brands sell their milk in 930 mL, 1857 mL, 1858 mL or some other really arbitrary number.
My guess is that it's close enough to a full liter so that the customers buy this thinking they got a liter of milk.
Not the same person, but I'm in a similar position, just further along. Getting meat out of my diet was actually really trivial. Cheese is the big problem.
Fully vegan when I cook at home, but vegan options in restaurants and fast food are non-existent where I live, so I have cheese whenever I eat out. I've also come to terms with the fact I can never be fully vegan because I have 2 cats who need their cat food.
Dairy contains a morphine-like substance so baby calves are drawn to it. Cheese is literally addictive.
While many scientists believe cats to be obligate carnivores, one study attempted to show that many of the studies conducted in plant-based diets to not show any detrimental effects, when the test wasn't conducted poorly or there was already a selection bias in place.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/
Just something to consider. This doesn't cement veganism for domestic felines, but it does show that better studies need to be conducted.
I'm aware, but I don't eat cheese out of choice. The times I do eat cheese are because I'm in a restaurant with family/friends and my options are being hungry the whole night, eating meat, or eating a salad with cheese in it. With those options, I take the cheese. Again, I don't eat cheese at home.
Fair enough. I'll keep an eye out, but I'm immediately skeptical because unlike us humans, cats are naturally carnivorous.
That's still a big improvement. Even if you don't go full vegan, cutting out meat has massive benefits
I'm working my way towards it! Did a one month trial run, now I am back to my previous diet but increasing my vegan meals and decreasing my meals with animal products.
I would welcome tips, though!
Same. I use the Forks over Knives app to find new recipes. But, with picky eating kids, it’s difficult to maintain a diet. Lots of black bean burgers. 🍔
Not who you replied to originally, but since you said you welcome tips:
Learn to cook tofu. There’s different levels of firmness, and an infinite number of ways to prepare and cook it. Try them all. Not everyone’s texture preference is the same. So the way I cook it and the way you cook it can vary drastically.
I hated tofu for ages until I found a way to cook it that yielded the outcome I liked.
Once you figure out the best way to achieve the texture you’re after, you can start worrying about seasoning it. Then you’re golden.
A fair amount of vegans might say that their experiences made them change overnight. I was not one of those people, as addiction is significant in me. When I was transitioning, I would go all in and keep abstaining from animal products as long as I could. Then I would mess up, and fall back into bad habits for a while. But the key thing that made the difference is that I never gave up. I'd track how many days I went without animal products and count that as my high score. Then when I tried again I would gamify it by being determined to get an even higher score.
As time went on I became more skilled at cooking plant-based, which helped keep me going since the food I was eating was beginning to taste better. Likewise my palette was growing more accustomed to plant-based foods. Eventually I messed up one last time by eating some pepperoni, but the experience was different. Because I had gotten so used to eating more wholesome meals, the pepperoni was such an intense salt bomb that I found it inedible (and that's coming from a salt-fiend).
But the other thing that changed was in my mind. Consciously I was already well aware that vegan diets are entirely adequate nutritionally. But a lifetime of unconscious carnist societal conditioning gave me this constant feeling as if I could not survive on plants alone. That was one of the things that always got in the way - this strange feeling like I was missing something and had to eat the stuff that was missing or I would die.
But when I bit into that pepperoni I suddenly had this calm recognition: "I don't need this. In fact this isn't food."
And things have only gotten easier over time. Hopefully this helps?
Have any recipe sites or suggestions?
There is a universal type of “recipe” that covers a ton of basic dishes around the world:
This can make lentil soup, Mediterranean or South American style bean dishes, chana masala, coconut curry, and lots of other stuff. Most can be made with a single pot.
Helpful. Thanks a lot.
For more wholesome foods I like Dr Greger's recipe books.
https://nutritionfacts.org/books/
I've had a few dishes from them as well, and they are really tasty.
https://thefirstmess.com/
There's plenty of others too, particularly on YouTube. Sauce Stache, Cheap Lazy Vegan, the Whole Food Plant Based Cooking Show, etc.
Thanks 🙏🏻
Hope it goes well for you. 😁
It does! The bits on reframing how you view food resonates. Burgers are still delicious to me, but I now feel more guilt and reach for plant-based equivalents more frequently. I no longer feel the necessity of meat, if that makes sense, so it is getting easier over time.
Burgers are something I missed a lot too! Fortunately plant-based options are becoming more common in fast food places and grocery stores. It usually does come at an upcharge though, so I don't get them too much. Other people have mixed opinions on meat substitutes, but they have been great for me.