It seems there is a huge effort to make Vegan burgers, vegan hotdogs, etc. Is there anything new in the vegan world or is it constantly trying to make foods to imitate meat based recipes?
It seems there is a huge effort to make Vegan burgers, vegan hotdogs, etc. Is there anything new in the vegan world or is it constantly trying to make foods to imitate meat based recipes?
Try looking up more “ethnic” foods. Ethiopian comes to mind as they have a lot of vegan dishes.
Most North Americans are going to try to emulate meats and things like that.
Asian cuisine also has a lot of vegan dishes, inventors of tofu.
I can get all veggy dishes from the local Chinese restaurant. The trouble starts because of all the sauces they use.
In my experience the only non-vegan ingredient in asian vegetarian dishes is eggs, and around here it is absolutely no problem to ask for extra-tofu instead. What sauces are you refering to?
Off the top of my head - fish sauce, oyster sauce, and red coloring in other sauces
Fish is not vegetarian tho, they usually use seaweed and mushroom sauce in vegetarian dishes
Yes, there are vegan versions or replacements, and there are plenty of people (cooks) who won’t even register that a sauce might not be vegan and use them. Source: personal experience. If this isn’t a problem around you, I am happy you don’t have to scrutinized menus like that.
Yes, gotcha! We had a Thai delivery service like that we used to order from. Despite clearly labeling the dishes as vegan they regularly used fishsauce, put eggs in it or even chicken once… Super frustrating and there wasn’t many other vegan options. After many fuck-ups we lost trust in that restaurant we got super paranoid everytime a dish tasted “fishy” so we stopped ordering from there.
Fried rice is fairly basic and you can put literally anything in it.
Very much so. There are so many great options from across the world.
Exactly my point. Why?
Cause that’s what they’re most familiar with
It takes time, effort and a bit of creativity to work with the many vegan protein sources. For example, most people are familiar with the concept of lentils, but when I tell people that I chuck red lentils into my tomato sauce, they look at me like that cannot possibly work. Mainly, because they’re not familiar with red lentils.
On the other hand, if a product promises that it tastes like bolognese / minced meat, they’ll know that they can chuck it into tomato sauce, even though it’s just as non-traditional of a protein for this usage.
I guess, it should also be said that there’s no marketing budget behind lentils. There’s no “Beyond Meat” brand that tells you how awesome beans and nuts are. As a result, they may not be as publicly visible, even though many vegans do make use of them.
Comfort food that they might have grown up with? Probably lots of other reasons too.