Surviving vegetarianism as a non-vegetarian chef

regularmother
Fri, 22 Sep 2023 14:35:20 +0000

My SO decided that she'd be a vegetarian after watching the most recent Avatar movie almost a year ago. I am the kind of person that will spend hours perfectly managing a charcoal smoker to make the perfect brisket and whose COVID hobby was making the perfect steak. I love chasing technique and incremental improvements. I hate instant pots and think making soups are boring- I want action and creativity rather than strictly following a recipe. I also enjoy cooking for others but cooking food I don't like to eat and don't like to make saps a lot of the joy out of it. This has been a challenging transition but I just wanted to share what's been working for me so people who are in a similar boat can survive, too, and hear what other people are doing to survive the transition as well.

1. Embrace the wok. Every meal from here on out can be a 1 pot mise-en-place made by action star. There is so much in making the perfect wok meal that it is crazy. Chinese cooking demystified is a great place to start, as is Kenji's book "The Wok." This single-handedly made me realize that I, too, could love cooking vegetarian.

2. To add meat flavor and texture into your meal without MSG, embrace the mushroom.

3. Wheat-started ferments are the next level down on the umami flavor chart without a lot of the vinegar of lacto-fermentation. Fermented soy beans are dope as are various fermented chile peppers (both korean and sichuan are delightful in different ways).

4. To add meat flavor into your meal without MSG, fermented everything is your friend. The Noma Guide to Fermentation is a great place to start and the pao cai pickle jar is the easiest way to have that on hand if you aren't eating pickles every day. Fuschia Dunlop goes into great detail on that in the Food of Sichuan.

5. "Alternative meats" never work if the meat is not the centerpiece of your meal. For example, impossible or beyond pork does not work ever in a pork fried rice because fake meats don't have the required fat content. Personally, I also really taste the pea protein flavor and have given up on them entirely. Use fresh mushrooms instead. Vegetarian mapo tofu isn't omitting the pork but rather adding wok-fried diced oyster/shitake/enoki/chanterelle mushrooms (removing some moisture is key- mushrooms have a lot of water in them) and increasing the amount of oil used since the mushrooms are so absorbent. Basically, impossible meat is impossibly bad- embrace vegetarian meals and their offer of totally unique flavors and textures.

6. A Nakiri or Usuba and a thousand little stackable steel mixing bowls makes the prep experience a lot better. Also, those bowls are like, $2-3/bowl at restaurant supply stores- don't buy them at amazon or walmart. Online restaurant supply stores offer similar prices+shipping.

7. When making dishes, particularly in a wok, your dish can still have fish sauce and other peoples' can have chinese light soy sauce or japanese soy sauce. BTW- another umami bomb- fermented sauces. Thai fish sauce or garum analogues are for you and soy sauce is for your vegetarian buddies.

8. There do exist good vegetarian broths that can mimic the flavor but not the gelatenous texture of a homemade chicken stock. AFAIK the only way to come close to that homemade broth mouthfeel is to thicken the soup in a finishing step with some type of flour (white wheat, teff, arrowroot, whatever you have on hand!). My greatest broth successes have involved a mirepoix, shitake mushrooms, piles of garlic, and tons and tons of nori, roasting or broiling it in an oven to add char, and then boiling it down with black peppercorns.

9. Your new burger recipe is Kenji's black bean burger. It's really good.

10. Most importantly, you can still cook for yourself sometimes. Just because other people don't eat meat doesn't mean you can't on occasion. You can still make The Dish even if you're the only one eating it. Accept that, when you move, you won't become friends with your butcher anymore and get weird cuts on the sly (h/t to Primal Supply of Philadelphia, the best butcher shop in the world).

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