Halp me [Vegan Food]

Chanus

Need recipes. The Lady Chanus has gone vegan to be healthier and all we seem to know is that Boca burgers are acceptable.

We need recipes.

I have a decent amount of cooking experience, so complexity isn't really an issue.

TychoCelchuuu

Boca burgers are not acceptable! I think the best way to be vegan is to treat fake meat like real meat: don't eat it. That shit is just preprocessed soy protein and grains and stuff and even if you don't mind the taste, it's expensive and silly. Vegan food should be vegan food, not faux-meat.

To that end, here is a big spreadsheet of my favorite vegan recipes* which can be supplemented by SomethingAwful's excellent vegan thread. If you want to do some baking, VeganBaking.net is a pretty good resource. Good recipe sites are The Post-Punk Kitchen (uses too much faux-non-vegan stuff but still has some good recipes), Manjula's Kitchen (wonderful site, not 100% vegan but much of it is), Smitten Kitchen's vegetarian section (again, not all vegan but still lots of good stuff), Serious Eats' Vegan Burgers article for real burgers rather than fucking Boca briquettes, 101 Cookbooks' vegan section (this website skews to the fancier/more refined end of the spectrum, so we're talking fancier ingredients generally), and The Fresh Loaf if you want to learn how to make bread (and you do!).

I don't use cookbooks, but have heard good things about: Veganomicon, Cook, Eat, Thrive, and Alternative Vegan for general duty cooking and Vegan Desserts and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar for desserts to bring to bake sales to convert people to veganism when they realize that you can make cookies that taste just as good as normal cookies.

Finally, here are my favorite spice mixes which have nothing to do with vegan cooking especially but which are always good to have on hand because spice mixes are the heart of a dish and new spice mixes = new ideas.

*A few non-vegan things may have snuck in. But it's 95% vegan at least.

ceres

I actually am going to disagree a bit, because I really like some of the Quorn products (mycoprotein). The grounds can really emulate the feel of ground beef and they taste pretty decent without having all the crap...

But otherwise yes, if you look at your average Boca or MSF product, the ingredients list is full of more bullshit that you will find in most packs of processed store-brand cold cuts. If she's going to bother going vegan for health reasons, she should really try to keep the ingredients she uses as whole as possible. There's nothing wrong with tofu, but if she likes it it's better to get the stuff that is soy beans and water.

TychoCelchuuu

I think my biggest beef with Quorn and other fake meat isn't that it's expensive, that it's potentially not so healthy, that it's often full of as many crazy chemicals as science has been able to invent, or that I prefer to make all of my food from raw ingredients rather than buying something premade - the biggest problem is that, especially for a brand new vegan, fake meat can become a crutch and cripple your ability to make actual vegan food. The sooner you move away from thinking of meals in terms of meat substitutes, the better. A long term, healthy, sustainable vegan diet does not consist of learning how to swap in fake meats for real meats, it consists in learning to cook actual legitimate vegan food yourself. Relying on Quorn and similar products just lets you stay that much further away from being someone who doesn't even think about meat at all when they cook. Cooking vegan is as effortless as cooking normally as long as you understand how to cook vegan, and Quorn doesn't factor into "how to cook vegan" at all. Quorn is just "how to cook with meat with Quorn" and although I'm sure it's delicious and nutritious and slots right into the meat gap in lots of recipes, I don't think the best way to be a long term vegan is to rely on something like Quorn for anything other than occasional instances.

(Which is, incidentally, the same way I think most people should eat meat - it's much cheaper and healthier to leave meat as a special treat, like it has been throughout much of human history, rather than making each meal about meat.)

TychoCelchuuu

And @Geth agrees.

Chanus

That's a good deal of a start. Thanks!