A couple of people have spoken to me before about wanting to cut back on, or completely cut meat from their diets, but didn’t know where to start. If anyone reading this feels the same way, here’s some fairly basic recipies that I usually recommend (Bosh’s tofu curry is straight up one of the best currys i’ve ever had - even my non-vegan family members love it)
Tofu is also super versatile and is pretty climate-friendly. there’s a bazillion different ways to do tofu, but simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself. Here’s a little guide for tofu newbies: A Guide to Cooking Tofu for Beginners - The Kitchn. If you wanna level up your tofu game with some marinades here’s six.
Lentils and beans are also super planet friendly, super cheap, and super versatile! You’ll be able to find recipies all over that are based around lentils and beans so feel free to do a quick internet search.
Sorry for the huge, intimidating wall of text! I do hope someone interested in cutting back on meat found this useful though :)
One of the things that annoys me about vegans… is they always try to convince me [this recipe] always tastes like the real thing.
And I think any one who eats meat on a regular basis is going to know an impossible burger is not beef- it might be the closest, sure.
Probably the best way to “convert” people- or encourage reductions- is to be less apologetic. Tofu is wonderful and delicious as it’s own thing- but as tofu-chicken or tofurky or anything of that sort, it sets expectations that can never be met.
Forgetting to mention a dish that stands in its own happens to be meatless… well, my parents were halfway through the second bowl of a tofu stir fry before they realized it.
When I went vegetarian years ago I hated it for the first few weeks… Because I was trying veggie/vegan versions of all the dishes I knew how to make. When I started exploring actual just veggie/vegan recipes that weren’t trying to be a fake meat version did it feel incredibly easy.
It’s exactly as you said, the fake version is never as good and you’ll most of the time be comparing it to the real thing… But meals that just happen to be vegetarian/vegan? They can be amazing on their own! I’ve never looked back since I started exploring new recipes instead of alternative versions of old.
To me the role of the “fake” stuff isn’t to replace it as staples in my diet but to let me have some old comforts once in a while, or at least something to fill the gap. When you’ve been veg for a few years a fake chicken finger can do a decent job of scratching the itch for something like that, even if you know it’s not the same
At least for me. Mileage varies depending on what you like about the original
Tried these Yves Mild Italian veggie sausages and I am hooked.
They have a nice dense texture but it’s not like the fake sausages you get with other brands that try to mimic the ground meat texture. More like a very firm a larger Hotdog wiener.
I like them on the BBQ with all the sides. They are fantastic sliced and put into a pasta dish. You could even throw them on a Hotdog bun.
I feel there needs to be some fake meat types to bring favorites over to and that brand nailed it with those sausages.
I hear you. I started buying lots of beyond burger patties from whole foods and I actually find them pretty delicious so I’ve typically buy them instead of ground beef. Unfortunately my wife keeps buying ground beef so I end up eating that occasionally but it’s nothing to get worked up over.
And I think any one who eats meat on a regular basis is going to know an impossible burger is not beef
Tbh. I don’t get using burgers as an example. Burgers as I know them contain so much other stuff (salad, tomato, cucumber, cheese, sauce etc.) that I barely notice what kind of patty is in there. I do notice a difference on stuff that is unprocessed meat without much to hide the differences (best example would probably be that steak) but for anything that uses ground meat and/or adds other stuff (like in a stew) that just diminishes/hides any differences.
I’m with you on the other stuff though, trying to imitate something perfectly often lands you in the uncanny valley where its close enough to be identifiable what it is supposed to be, but just slightly off to be distracting. Like that one recipe you remember from your parents or grand parents that you always loved as a kid but no one can get exactly like you remember it.
One of the things that annoys me about vegans… is they always …
And one thing that annoys me about non-vegans is that they always tend to stereotype vegans. There are nearly 100 million vegans in the world my friend. We are not all the same.
It really depends on the food, and just how much “into” food you are. We’re probably never going to have a perfect replacement for a medium rare steak. But how many meat eaters eat medium rare? 90% of the women I know, and 70% of men will happily eat a shoe sole steak smothered in cheap ketchup, or pink sludge pressed into chicken nugget form. Those things can definitely be made vegan, and those people (generally, more often than not) wouldn’t taste the difference.
But yes, meat alternatives (Tofu, Tempeh, BEANS), instead of replacements (Beyond Meat) are the better long term option.
even if it’s shoe leather, you can still tell a difference in steaks just by looking at it.
As for the nuggets… I knew a guy whose job was doing chemical assays and stuffs. had a mass spectrometer and some other interesting equipment in his office. Because it was usually locked under NDA’s and stuff, he would instead go out to mcdonalds and buy whatever new thing came out on the menu and run that through. YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.
I’m no veg(etari)an by any measure, but I have this to say to people who are exclusively meat-eaters: you’re missing out on a world of interesting flavours and textures.
Next time you make chicken curry, replace half the chicken with tofu. Bolognese - do half lentils & kidney beans. Beans and legumes are cheap as, great for the current economic climate (and the real climate, I guess…)
PS: mushrooms are the food of gods. There’s just so many varieties, you can use them for nearly anything.
simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself
More like an easy way to convince yourself tofu is terrible. It has its uses, but a direct replacement for meat is not one of them. It has almost no flavor, and if you don’t cook it just right, it has all the texture of undercooked scrambled eggs.
There’s a lot of food that is not meat-based that people can eat. For instance, Thai food is generally vegetarian.
The problem is that Americans tried to substitute meat dishes with meat-like vegetarian dishes, which generally don’t taste all that great. In fact, one could argue that many traditional American dishes don’t taste all that great to begin with which is why the lots of meat.
A simple dish of spaghetti or pasta with a tomato, pesto or aglio e olio are great options.
Also, one needing necessarily 100% remove the meat. Is 75 or 80% reduction in meat intake allows one to continue to eat meat, while still vastly reducing the amount of meat you’re eating. Since one’s impact on the global economy and meet consumption as a totality is infinitesimal, the reduction itself is significant even if you don’t completely eliminate the meat from your diet.
I think most people would find this a hell of a lot more palatable than going cold turkey vegan and even banning honey from your diet, which many of my vegan friends have done. As well as not eating any sugar because they claim that sugar is made from animals somehow…
There is a lot of misinformation in grandstanding when it comes to diet politics which just borderlines on the silly.
People should do what they can from a realistic perspective, well not killing themselves or making themselves miserable from their political driven lifestyle choices. I know quite a few vegans and vegetarians who have decided to quit being a vegan or vegetarian simply because over the long haul it made them unhappy and eventually they wanted to eat meat again. Now they eat more meat than I do who I would consider myself a light meat eater.
A couple of people have spoken to me before about wanting to cut back on, or completely cut meat from their diets, but didn’t know where to start. If anyone reading this feels the same way, here’s some fairly basic recipies that I usually recommend (Bosh’s tofu curry is straight up one of the best currys i’ve ever had - even my non-vegan family members love it)
Written:
Videos:
Tofu is also super versatile and is pretty climate-friendly. there’s a bazillion different ways to do tofu, but simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself. Here’s a little guide for tofu newbies: A Guide to Cooking Tofu for Beginners - The Kitchn. If you wanna level up your tofu game with some marinades here’s six.
Lentils and beans are also super planet friendly, super cheap, and super versatile! You’ll be able to find recipies all over that are based around lentils and beans so feel free to do a quick internet search.
Sorry for the huge, intimidating wall of text! I do hope someone interested in cutting back on meat found this useful though :)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/uF0PvnlIK48
https://piped.video/JRk2YnopKCA
https://piped.video/SKT54t3ULg4
https://piped.video/SbJiZfKqqQ8
https://piped.video/cfGuyBqk6io
https://piped.video/NnLAzLal17w
https://piped.video/gmLQB_nL1aE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
One of the things that annoys me about vegans… is they always try to convince me [this recipe] always tastes like the real thing.
And I think any one who eats meat on a regular basis is going to know an impossible burger is not beef- it might be the closest, sure.
Probably the best way to “convert” people- or encourage reductions- is to be less apologetic. Tofu is wonderful and delicious as it’s own thing- but as tofu-chicken or tofurky or anything of that sort, it sets expectations that can never be met.
Forgetting to mention a dish that stands in its own happens to be meatless… well, my parents were halfway through the second bowl of a tofu stir fry before they realized it.
When I went vegetarian years ago I hated it for the first few weeks… Because I was trying veggie/vegan versions of all the dishes I knew how to make. When I started exploring actual just veggie/vegan recipes that weren’t trying to be a fake meat version did it feel incredibly easy.
It’s exactly as you said, the fake version is never as good and you’ll most of the time be comparing it to the real thing… But meals that just happen to be vegetarian/vegan? They can be amazing on their own! I’ve never looked back since I started exploring new recipes instead of alternative versions of old.
To me the role of the “fake” stuff isn’t to replace it as staples in my diet but to let me have some old comforts once in a while, or at least something to fill the gap. When you’ve been veg for a few years a fake chicken finger can do a decent job of scratching the itch for something like that, even if you know it’s not the same
At least for me. Mileage varies depending on what you like about the original
I love meat.
Tried these Yves Mild Italian veggie sausages and I am hooked.
They have a nice dense texture but it’s not like the fake sausages you get with other brands that try to mimic the ground meat texture. More like a very firm a larger Hotdog wiener.
I like them on the BBQ with all the sides. They are fantastic sliced and put into a pasta dish. You could even throw them on a Hotdog bun.
I feel there needs to be some fake meat types to bring favorites over to and that brand nailed it with those sausages.
I hear you. I started buying lots of beyond burger patties from whole foods and I actually find them pretty delicious so I’ve typically buy them instead of ground beef. Unfortunately my wife keeps buying ground beef so I end up eating that occasionally but it’s nothing to get worked up over.
Tbh. I don’t get using burgers as an example. Burgers as I know them contain so much other stuff (salad, tomato, cucumber, cheese, sauce etc.) that I barely notice what kind of patty is in there. I do notice a difference on stuff that is unprocessed meat without much to hide the differences (best example would probably be that steak) but for anything that uses ground meat and/or adds other stuff (like in a stew) that just diminishes/hides any differences.
I’m with you on the other stuff though, trying to imitate something perfectly often lands you in the uncanny valley where its close enough to be identifiable what it is supposed to be, but just slightly off to be distracting. Like that one recipe you remember from your parents or grand parents that you always loved as a kid but no one can get exactly like you remember it.
And one thing that annoys me about non-vegans is that they always tend to stereotype vegans. There are nearly 100 million vegans in the world my friend. We are not all the same.
fair enough. instead allow me to say all the vegans I’ve met. (or at least, know about.)
It really depends on the food, and just how much “into” food you are. We’re probably never going to have a perfect replacement for a medium rare steak. But how many meat eaters eat medium rare? 90% of the women I know, and 70% of men will happily eat a shoe sole steak smothered in cheap ketchup, or pink sludge pressed into chicken nugget form. Those things can definitely be made vegan, and those people (generally, more often than not) wouldn’t taste the difference.
But yes, meat alternatives (Tofu, Tempeh, BEANS), instead of replacements (Beyond Meat) are the better long term option.
even if it’s shoe leather, you can still tell a difference in steaks just by looking at it. As for the nuggets… I knew a guy whose job was doing chemical assays and stuffs. had a mass spectrometer and some other interesting equipment in his office. Because it was usually locked under NDA’s and stuff, he would instead go out to mcdonalds and buy whatever new thing came out on the menu and run that through. YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.
I do. Tell us
Thanks for taking the time. This is wonderful.
I’m no veg(etari)an by any measure, but I have this to say to people who are exclusively meat-eaters: you’re missing out on a world of interesting flavours and textures.
Next time you make chicken curry, replace half the chicken with tofu. Bolognese - do half lentils & kidney beans. Beans and legumes are cheap as, great for the current economic climate (and the real climate, I guess…)
PS: mushrooms are the food of gods. There’s just so many varieties, you can use them for nearly anything.
More like an easy way to convince yourself tofu is terrible. It has its uses, but a direct replacement for meat is not one of them. It has almost no flavor, and if you don’t cook it just right, it has all the texture of undercooked scrambled eggs.
That’s why professionals marinate tofu.
There’s a lot of food that is not meat-based that people can eat. For instance, Thai food is generally vegetarian.
The problem is that Americans tried to substitute meat dishes with meat-like vegetarian dishes, which generally don’t taste all that great. In fact, one could argue that many traditional American dishes don’t taste all that great to begin with which is why the lots of meat.
A simple dish of spaghetti or pasta with a tomato, pesto or aglio e olio are great options.
Also, one needing necessarily 100% remove the meat. Is 75 or 80% reduction in meat intake allows one to continue to eat meat, while still vastly reducing the amount of meat you’re eating. Since one’s impact on the global economy and meet consumption as a totality is infinitesimal, the reduction itself is significant even if you don’t completely eliminate the meat from your diet.
I think most people would find this a hell of a lot more palatable than going cold turkey vegan and even banning honey from your diet, which many of my vegan friends have done. As well as not eating any sugar because they claim that sugar is made from animals somehow…
There is a lot of misinformation in grandstanding when it comes to diet politics which just borderlines on the silly.
People should do what they can from a realistic perspective, well not killing themselves or making themselves miserable from their political driven lifestyle choices. I know quite a few vegans and vegetarians who have decided to quit being a vegan or vegetarian simply because over the long haul it made them unhappy and eventually they wanted to eat meat again. Now they eat more meat than I do who I would consider myself a light meat eater.