Hey y’all, just in the posting mood today! I was writing another post and thought about my love for good vegan alternatives. I am not personally vegan, but as someone who takes great pride and pleasure as a cook serving other people food, I want to serve my vegan comrades as best as I can, so I try to taste test a lot of vegan stuff. I’m not a carnist who believes that the vegan option can never taste as good, I just have a lot of allergies so I have to be cautious about eating things that aren’t meat. However I’ve tasted and heard from vegans, certain things like cheese simply aren’t as good as the non-vegan counter part. I feel like we hear about this stuff way too much though, as there are so many interesting flavors vegans use that carnists don’t.
My personal pick for this topic is coconut aminos. Soy sauce is a great way to add umami flavor into almost anything you’re making, so I was disheartened at first when I heard that soy sauce wasn’t vegan. But one of my vegan friends got me a bottle of coconut aminos to try, and it blew my mind. The extra sweetness in it makes so many things you’d use soy sauce for way better. Teriyaki sauce should always be made with coconut aminos, fried rice gets a slight sweetness that really lends well to the veggies in it, it’s so fucking good.
Soy sauce is vegan though?
It should be but some brands find a way…
You’d really have to go out of your way to find non vegan soy sauce, especially in the west.
Western soy sauce just isn’t that good though. I live in the midwest, we have 3 options for soy sauce at the supermarket, and they’re (Kikkomans, PF Changs, or La Choy) just mid, if that was the only soy sauce I could use I’d definitely feel like I’m missing out. I’d much rather just get coconut aminos and not worry about the brand because it’ll taste better anyways
I was talking more soy sauce available in the west, not necessarily brewed here. I get my soy sauce at Asian markets and I can’t remember the last time I checked the ingredients on a bottle and it wasn’t vegan. It’s just not certified since vegan certifications in Asia are just starting to become a thing.
The cheap “western” store-brand soy sauce from my local supermarket is actually made in China. It is not as good as Kee Kum Lee or PRB but there nothing wrong with it.
Hit up your local Asian market for soy sauce. Big box groceries stores generally have shit for ethnic food.
My local store has like a quarter of an isle worth of shelf space just for soy sauce.
I suppose if someone accidentally grabs fish-sauce or something that’s halfway there. There’s a gazillion sorts of soy, fish, and mushroom sauces at your standard Asian grocer that will honestly spoil most cooks. Kikkoman is tolerable, but getting the fancier stuff is worth it if you find a sudden windfall.
I’ve never seen mushroom sauces, but it sounds amazing.
Not every brand is. But like I said, my vegan friend gave me a bottle of coconut aminos because there were enough non-vegan brands out that she just thought none of it was vegan. Plus, I looked it up, Kikkomen is the first brand that comes up for vegan soy sauce and that’s not particularly good soy sauce.
Do you know what brands aren’t? My go-to brand is Pearl River Bridge and as far as I can tell it’s vegan.
I’m looking into it and can’t find an example of a specifically non-vegan soy sauce, it seems most of them are vegan. I find it odd that so many websites warn about certain ingredients manufacturers can add without any examples.
Bean burger.
Or the portabello cap burgers where it’s just a big mushroom with some pesto on top.
What do you mean soy sauce isn’t vegan? Ingredients water, soybeans, wheat, salt.
The Fee Foam cocktail foam is legitimately much less hassle than egg whites. I’m vegan so I don’t know if it tastes better (both are bad in large amounts) but I hear that it’s caught on at bars.
maybe they were confused with worshestire sauce, fish sauce or oyster sauce or something
OP: you gotta read the ingredients to decide if something is vegan.
well sometimes you can’t tell from the ingredients e.g. bone char sugar, cysteine from feathers instead of bacteria or synthetic. But those are edge cases
If you want to be perfect about things like that, then you really, really gotta check the ingredients and not take anyone’s word for it. There is no other choice but to learn about all those kinds of things. Gotta go online and read up on less obvious sources of nonveganity. Scrutinize every single item you pick up. Check each brand and each variety/flavor with a given brand. And even if you read the label before you have to re read it now n again in case they change something.
At least now you have a phone you can bring shopping with you to look up anything even slightly questionable. Or take a picture for later research.
It’s stuff like this that’s the reason why the Vegan Society has the “as far as is practicable and possible” clause in it, especially since sugar and a few other “ambiguous” things are such ubiquitous ingredients. For bone char in sugar specifically, I hear it’s a pretty exclusively American issue but even many businesses based in the United States are apparently no longer using sugar that has been refined with bone char. If I buy sugar as a standalone ingredient, I definitely always get organic sugar, though, as that’s an instance where you can be a lot more selective and accurate.
I have a pretty good reason for this. A vegan friend of mine made a big deal about soy sauce once, and gave me the bottle of coconut aminos specifically for me to try vegan stuff. I wasn’t going to do some “umm… acktyually” shit on a vegan friend when I myself wasn’t vegan, so I’ve just been taking her word for it for the past few years 😭
Aquafaba is a fantastic substitute for egg whites in cocktails.
You can make a killer whiskey sour with aquafaba, lemon juice (Meyer lemon), nice whiskey, and a dash of aromatic bitters
It’s specific, but Quorn nuggets are objectively superior to chicken nuggets in every way.
Better taste, better texture, no gristle, easier to cook all the way through, zero (well okay, much less) chance of food poisoning.
Even if you’re not a vegetarian there’s simply no reason to eat chicken nuggets any more, they’re fully obsolete.
never seen quorn for sale in north america although theoretically it is available. it’s great.
Why must the thing I want to try never be available in bumfuck middle of nowhere, US
The Quorn Meatless Turkey-Style Roast is better than real turkey. Not vegan though. (eggs and milk)
Not sure if this is what you were looking for but a friend who was a chef at some high end restaurants told me these taste better than actual breaded fish fillets.
These can be hit and miss. I’m close to tuning it in but I air fry mine and sometimes end up with soggy breading on the bottom. For a faux beer batter fish though, they are for sure pretty decent.
2 of these on a bun with a tartar sauce made with vegan mayo is a legit good idea for OP.
I just pan fry them and they usually turn out well.
nooch is much better than the dairy analogues closest to it, like shelf stable super dessicated cheese-dairy things like chip coverings, kraft ‘parmesan’. very firmly believe that doritos would be better with nooch than their actual cheese based recipe.
I’ve heard great things about nooch and definitely want to add it to my cabinet. I’ve had nooch popcorn when I’m really high, but that’s about it.
I’d love to try nooch Doritos
Oat milk.
Oat milk is so much better than cow milk, plus it doesn’t spoil in a disgusting way like cow milk.
not sure for individual ingredients but I prefer vegan chili, with lentils &
I’ll have to try chili with lentins sometime! I haven’t tried lentils in a really long time, they got really expensive where I live right when I started having an interest in trying it again. I can definitely fuck with some vegan chili though. Anybody who isn’t a beanpilled chilicel has simply lost their minds
I love seitan so so so much more than meat. I always was uncomfortable with meat, especially preparing it, and once I found that there were viable alternatives that I could simply replace meat with in pretty much every recipe I already knew was life changing and I legitimately never looked back.
It’s also just great for salads because you don’t need to really cook it and don’t have to worry about it spoiling like meat.
“Better tasting” is highly subjective. For me, I hardly remember what animal flesh and secretions taste like. If I eat a food imitating one that’s normally made with flesh, I don’t even judge it as an “alternative” anymore. I judge it based on whether or not it tastes good on its own. That’s a good enough metric for me, regardless of how close it comes to the “original,” and like I said, it’s highly subjective. Since I don’t interpret animal-derived things as food anymore, I personally have nothing to compare the alternatives to considering the way my mind operates now.
It’s also worth noting that these alternatives can be prepared in a wide variety of ways. If you’re thinking about particular brands for plant-based alternatives, there are a variety of different ingredients used as bases. One brand of plant-based nuggets may use soy as a base, another may be made of gluten, and some even use pea protein or jackfruit. I generally find soy-based
things very tasty to me, except in the case of non-dairy cheese. I’d rather them be some kind of nut-based, usually cashew-based, and it’s great to make these plant-based cheeses at home if you have a blender.Also, to second @EndMilkInCrisps@hexbear.net, soy sauce is already vegan. The source you got that from probably mixed it up with fish sauce or something of the sort, or they might’ve been thinking about the fact that soy sauce isn’t gluten-free instead, which is a lot more of a common mix-up than one might think.
I respect that a lot, it’s personally how I try to enjoy food separate from work. There’s just part of me that wants complete parity in what I’m serving. I used to work at a restaurant that served DISGUSTING frozen black bean burgers (nothing wrong with bean burgers, this one just sucked ass) and I genuinely hated sending it out to any vegans who ordered a burger. I just want everybody to get good food, so I put a lot of pressure on myself trying to make sure everything tastes how I want it to now. But knowing that perspective definitely makes me more comfortable with not having perfect parity between the two menus.
I think I wanna give some soy nuggets a try. I’ve been trying to move away from meat more, but allergies make it really difficult and scary. Especially with a meat like chicken, there’s not really much culinary reason not to replace it. Plus I’m even allergic to chicken on random occasions so finding a replacement for that would be good.
I looked into the soy sauce thing, and I think I see where my friend got it. We live in the midwest, where soy sauce selection is scarce. Kikkomen is pretty much the best choice around here, which while it is vegan, it’s also just not a very good soy sauce. The other options, I assume weren’t vegan, because apparently certain manufacturers just find a way to make it non-vegan, which sucks ass. Speaking of that, I need to check if the soy sauce at work is vegan, I’ve been working under the assumption that it isn’t. I’d rather be overcautious than accidentally serve a vegan something non-vegan yk?
As much as I love sour cream, there are some instances where a vegan cream tastes better, usually due to the butteriness of cashews. I also prefer oat milk over regular, but sadly oat ice cream can’t quite compete with frozen custard in terms of flavor. Maybe if it was some sort of coconut cream and agar combination… 🤔
For a vegan ice cream look for So Delicious. They use cashew milk.
They’re usually really expensive but I’ll grab em on sale, they have a lemon vanilla one that is AMAZING it tastes like eating a blended up lemon meringue pie!
They definitely are pricey. I look at it as a “treat yourself” purchase and get one once every couple of months.
I don’t super like coconut animos. They’re fine, but too sweet imo. But, Tamari is good as well, and I do really like this vegan ‘fish sauce’ my local asian mart sells, made from fermented pinapple.
Oat milk is the big one to me. I think its so much tastier than dairy milk.
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Can second that vegan nuggies are more nuggetty than corpse nuggies. 100% satisfying unless you are craving blended flesh
Anything that uses ground beef, I substitute firm tofu. It soaks up the flavors so much better. You can do it any style. I make Asian “beef” bowls and Mexican taco meat like this.
How do you season it? In my experience, ground beef/pork has no substitute that gets even close.
Press it to get most of the water out. Toss it in a pan on medium low heat with some olive oil and just salt and pepper, then cook till it gets light gold. If you heat it up too much, it’ll stick to the pan. It takes a good 25 minutes of low power to get the consistency right. Once it’s gold, you can do whatever you want, but I recommend wet seasonings for max flavor (think taco seasoning packets you add water to and simmer). I won’t go so far as to say it tastes like meat, but I genuinely like the taste better than ground beef.
While I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, personally NotMilk is what came to mind- it genuinely tastes so incredibly like milk, I was shocked- yet it also has that subtle pineapple flavor (part of what they used to imitate milk, I guess) making it even better. I don’t tend to consider other plant-based milks a replacement but rather their own separate drinks- but NotMilk really hit the spot.
Other than that, while it’s subjective… I’ve tried Chinese mock duck and other mock meats (generally gluten and tofu based) prepared in ways that were really tasty and could more than replace certain kinds of dishes.
