Cookbook:Vegan cuisine
Cookbook | Cuisines | Special diets
- Vegan cuisine uses no animal products, such as meat, dairy, or eggs. This is more restrictive than vegetarian cuisine, which allows non-meat animal products. All vegan recipes are vegetarian.
- Different people practice veganism for different reasons; some of the most common are animal rights/welfare considerations, environmental concerns, and health. See Wikipedia's article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism) for more information on veganism.
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Vegan nutrition
- Vegan nutrition is similar to vegetarian nutrition, but extra care needs to be taken to include important nutrients. See the Vegetarian society's page on Vegan nutrition (http://www.vegsoc.org/info/vegan-nutrition.html), or Wikipedia's article.
- There is also some advice on eating a Healthy Vegan Diet or Vegan Diet Substitutions
Vegan Ingredient Substitutes
Dairy
Milk
Milk in cooking provides flavor and moisture, but generally does not have special physical properties that distinguish it from some other fluid.
Soy Milk
Soy milk can generally be substituted directly for milk in any recipe, though it does not curdle in the same way cow's milk does when heated. There are a massive variety of soy milks available; the best tend to be refrigerated brands, such as Organic Valley (http://www.organicvalley.com/products_recipes/product_detail.html?id=155&cat=11&sub=50), Silk (http://silkissoy.com/index.php?id=34), Whole Foods private brand (http://wholefoods.com/products/365organic/soymilk-r_original.html), and Trader Joe's (http://www.traderjoes.com) private brand.
Other Non-Dairy Milks
Other non-dairy milks include oat milk, almond milk, and rice milk.
- Rice milk is relatively watery but has a good flavour and doesn't really require sweetening.
- Oat milk can be very thick and creamy.
- Almond milk is also somewhat watery, but has a rich flavor.
Any of these non-dairy milks make a fine replacement for cow's milk in recipes.
Buttermilk
Add one tablespoon of lemon juice to one cup of soy milk. Stir, and let stand for 10 minutes.
Butter
Butter is easily replaced by a form of margarine.
In some cases, the butter is a major ingredient, as in icing, and margarines often leave a greasy feeling in your mouth if used as a substitute; this is because the melting point of margarine (33-43 °C, depending upon formulation) is often higher than the temperature of the human body (37 °C), while the melting point of butter is below it (32-35 °C). In these situations cocoa butter can be used, since it has a melting point closer to that of butter (34-38 °C). See Ochef.com's answer to Is There a Difference Between Butter & Margarine? (http://www.ochef.com/864.htm) for more information.
Cheese
Most substitute cheese is made of soy, though there are also nut varieties. Beware; some soy cheeses contain casein/caseinate, a milk derivative.
Cashew cheese or nutritional yeast "cheese" sauce are also be appropriate for some dishes.
Cream Cheese
Cream
Alpro (http://www.alpro.com/) make an excellent cream substitute, which has a very similar texture to real cream and tastes extremely similar.
Yogurt
There are a variety of soy yogurts ("cultured soy") available that can be used in place of dairy yogurt including Whole Soy (http://www.wholesoyco.com/product_yogurt.html), Stonyfield Farms O'Soy (http://www.stonyfield.com/OurProducts/AllNaturalCulturedSoy.cfm) and Silk (http://silkissoy.com/index.php?id=35).
Sour Cream
A vegan sour cream is Tofutti's Sour Supreme (http://www.tofutti.com/soursupreme.0.html), a non-hydrogenated variety is Tofutti's Better than Sour Cream (http://www.tofutti.com/nh.0.html).
Mayonnaise
An excellent vegan mayonnaise is Follow Your Heart's Veganaise (http://followyourheart.com/vegenaise.html), available in canola oil ("original"), expeller-pressed canola oil, grapeseed oil, and organic expeller-pressed soybean varieties. Another vegan mayonnaise is Nayonnaise.
Eggs
Eggs have a varied role in cooking; as a wash they provide a glossy texture to breads, when the whites are whipped they provide volume, sometimes (as in pancakes) they are simply traditional and play no structural role, other times they are used to make mixtures stick together.
Vegan egg replacements are generally not good for washes or where they are a major component, as in meringue.
A commercially available egg replacer is Ener-G Egg Replacer (http://www.ener-g.com/store/detail.aspx?sn=MilkAndEggSubstitutes&id=97&cat=8). An egg can also be replaced by 1 T Applesauce or other thick puree, like Pumpkin Puree used for pies, 1/2 mashed Banana, 1 T of blended (in a blender) Silken Tofu, or Flax Seed "Gloop".
Several of these methods are covered at Noël V. Nevins' Vegan Cooking (http://home.teleport.com/~noelvn/vegan/egg_replacers.html).
Honey
While some vegans eat honey, others would like to avoid it. Sweet Cactus Farms (http://www.sweetcactusfarms.com) produces "Agave nectar" as a general-purpose liquid sweetener, which is a suitable honey substitute. Golden syrup is also a good substitute.
Meat
Meat can be replaced with varying degrees of success by tofu, tempeh, seitan, textured vegetable protein, vegetable or nut mixtures, or a commercially available meat substitute such as tofurkey (http://tofurkey.com/products.htm), soyrizo, or soy taco.
Many asian foods stores have false meat available. False squid is especially realistic, but there is also false chicken, pork, duck, and fish. These are usually made from gluten, but often also have soy ingredients.
Vegan recipes
Breakfast
Beverages
Milks
Juices
Sauces
Components
Recipes used as components to many other recipes.
Appetizers and Sides
Soups
- Keralan vegetable stew, often served with Appam
- Lentil soup
- Vegetable Stew and Dumplings
Bread
Salads
Mains
- Appam, often served with Keralan vegetable stew
- Black-Eyed Peas and Kale
- Basic Indian tomato gravy (curry base)
- Bean Chili
- Cookbook:Doc'Roberts Grilled Vegetable Sandwich
- Eggplant and Chickpea Skillet
- English Field Bean Pate
- Indian Beans
- Indian Potatoes
- Indian Rice
- Macaroni & Nutritional Yeast
- Masala Dosa (Dosa with Aloo Masala and
- Mung Beans and Brown Rice
- Coconut Chutney)
- Pandora's Feast
- Pecan Spinach Pasta
- Polenta
- Potato-Chickpea Curry
- Puliyodarai
- Pulse Chutney
- Ratatouille
- Rice an' Peas
- Samosa
- Tadka dhal
- Tofu Pancake
- Upeseru and Mudde
- Vegan Chili
- Vegetable Pie
Desserts
External links
- VegWeb.com (http://www.vegweb.com) Enormous collection of excellent vegan recipes
- VeggieBoards (http://www.veggieboards.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=142) (recipes and message board)
- Vegan-food.net (http://www.vegan-food.net/) Huge collection of vegan recipes
- CookVeg.com (http://www.CookVeg.com/) More vegan recipes
- Vegan Club Wiki (http://www.veganclub.com)
- VeganWiki (http://veganwiki.org/) (In German)
- Wikiveg (http://www.wikiveg.org)
- Kate Pugh's vegan cookery site (http://www.earth.li/~kake/cookery/)
- Noël V. Nevins' Vegan Cooking (http://home.teleport.com/~noelvn/vegan/vegan_cooking.html) with excellent discussion of vegan baking issues.
- Vegan rice cooker techniques (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_cooker_techniques)