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Surviving vegetarianism as a non-vegetarian chef
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.
- 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.
- To add meat flavor and texture into your meal without MSG, embrace the mushroom.
- 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).
- 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.
- "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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Your new burger recipe is Kenji's black bean burger. It's really good.
- 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).
Re 2 and 4, just use MSG. It does, after all, stand for Makes Shit Good
On point 5, there are very good meat alternatives out there but you're right they really only work as ingredients. Last time I made a vegan chilli none of the meat eaters even noticed there was no beef in it.
If you think soups and one-pot cooking is boring, you're doing it wrong :)
In the post it's unclear if OP is aware that MSG is a perfectly good seasoning to use, but since they're a chef I wouldn't be surprised if they are highlighting mushrooms and fermented foods simply because they provide MSG along with more complex, layered flavors, so that's often a good method to incorporate MSG even though its pure form is delicious and isn't unhealthy.
For people who don't inherently enjoy adding extra steps or ingredients while cooking, I recommend just using a pinch of the pure stuff. Personally I use all methods at my disposal, pure MSG on top of multiple other ingredients that contain it. My chili gets soy sauce or Vegemite along with the MSG.
I used to get my MSG directly from meat. The additional flavors, textures, and fats also add a lot of depth to the meal. Literally 1 slice of pork belly and you have pork fried rice! A startling number of transitioning vegetarians talk about throwing in some MSG as that works as a replacement.
As you said, I talked a lot about alternatives to pure MSG but I do use MSG in addition. I just want to highlight how a lot of that can be maintained. The crispy, crusty, smokey meat flavor and texture? Toasted rapeseed oil or butter and mushroom of some cut size suitable for your dish at medium heat is a great substitute. Add MSG if it's not enough!
You mentioned Vegemite, so I’m assuming you’re in Australia… do you know where I can find MSG? I’ve looked in supermarkets and can’t find it, and I’ve even had a few quick searches through the aisles of my local Asian grocer, but didn’t spot it. Is it labelled something differently (maybe a MSG euphemism?) to avoid negative reputation or something?
Here in the USA the most common brand is Accent. But generally speaking you will get a much better deal if you go to an Asian market.
I think the most common brand for most of the world is Ajinomoto.
Do Australian cities have sizeable Asian immigrant communities? Start in Asian groceries if possible, as a lot of southeast Asia, and China, use it. It'll likely be clear long crystals in a clear bag. In an Asian supermarket they would definitely not be disguising it with a euphemistic name. I know the Taiwanese chain I go to in the US stocks a few Asian brands.
Also, mushrooms and fermented foods have MSG already. That’s why they taste like MSG…
If anyone is coming over to my house and I'm cooking, it'll be plant-based. I always tell my guests but it's done wonders to broaden people's pallets and try more plant-based meals.
Speaking of wok work. Don't sleep on tofu fried in a wok. As like a 10ish year vegetarian, I recently discovered fried tofu in a wok and it's amazing.
Extra firm tofu, pressed, chopped, seasoned with Bragg liguid aminos, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and the secret ingredient Jada Spices Vegan Chicken Salt. Toss in corn starch and fry - hits the chicken itch anytime I have it.
Another crowd pleaser and one of my personal favorites lazy dishes is Chef Johns Best Baked Beans and Rice. So dang good and can even be done vegan.
Grilled veggies are also a summer staple at our house. Fresh asparagus, broccoli and mushrooms tossed in olive oil and seasonings cooked on indirect heat on a charcoal grill is bomb.
With fall right around the corner, Japanese Curry is another crazy easy amazing comfort food that all my omnivore friends LOVE.
Kudos for being a good SO and making it work.
There are many styles of tofu out there. Most westerners tend to like the firm stuff the best, but once you have gotten used to it there is a whole world to explore. Silken tofu is one of those things that can sound kind of gross but once you get used to the idea it actually has a really luxurious mouthfeel and is very versatile. You can even make it into “tofu pudding” by adding sugar syrup to it!
One thing I like is fried stinky tofu. Once again, it takes some getting used to, but it’s got some amazing texture and flavor. It’s commonly served with a sweet and spicy dipping sauce.
You recently discovered fried tofu? Oh man, when we do tofu it's like a requirement to fry it! It takes on so much of that flavor and the crispy edges are a requirement for the texture. I personally can't really stand tofu without it being fried.
I could never make it right! It took going to our local texmex joint to discover how good fried tofu is. I straight up asked them HOW and they hooked me up. Fried tofu is the best.
I got really into wok cooking over the summer. Got an outdoor burner and round-bottom wok. Made the best fried rice I've ever made thanks to a combination of Kenji and Alex's fried rice playlist.
I find it very satisfying to cook on a wok, because whenever I'm cooking anything I constantly want to fuss with things. With a wok constantly doing something is 100% required and I love it.
In my experience shishkebab skewers can easily accomodate meat eaters and non meat eaters together. Deep fried tofu is very tasty.
Good luck.
As a long time vegan, bless you for embracing the veggie side. All of your tips are solid.
I would like to add that EVERYONE needs a broad and varied spice and seasoning rack. Different black (and white, and pink and green) peppers, a variety of paprikas and dried chilis, herbs (bay leaves!) and other seasonings will mame the same base ingredients taste different every day.
Always makes happy to see someone mention veganism! I've always found it funny that all the seasonings we cherish and love are really just plants and minerals. Don't want plain chicken? Slap some ground up plants and minerals on it.
Also, while unrelated to this thread, because I perused a previous comment of yours I've included a couple resources I've used for my seitan/seitan-like recipes that my wife and I enjoy.
Thank so much for the recipes! We sre renovating a new home. These will definitely get tested out in the new kitchen.
You seem to trying to only use actual food items as ingredients but in case you are nevertheless interested, a biologist recently released a video of him chemically imitating chicken soup based on an old patent. It also includes taste testers reactions, and a pretty in-depth explanation of how our taste buds work.
If you’re looking for food projects to design & perfect & fuss over, how about sauces? Great sauces bring great flavor to my plant based meals. Mexican sauces (mole, salsas, ranchero sauce, etc etc) can be simple or complex. Pestos, aiolis, peanut sauce, Indian chutneys, etc etc.
Working with chile peppers could be satisfying too. Start with poblanos and then there’s a world of chiles with flavors and textures to obsess over. So much delicious and complicated Mexican food out there doesn’t need meat!
And there is a whole world of vegetarian Indian food to learn (worlds actually, with the different regions). There are lots of new techniques and spices to master & then you can riff on them. Some dishes require ‘active’ cooking (like a wok), some can take all day tending (like a brisket).
For any other foodies out there, there are two youtube cooking channels that focus on those richer and more elaborate recipes that I would recommend, Sauce Stache and Wicked Kitchen.
Highly recommend getting a copy of America's Test Kitchen: The Complete Plant-Based Cookbook. It is loaded with creative recipes that are vegan forward with some caveats for making them vegetarian if preferred. But the beginning chapters are a great resource on how to make you Kitchen more plant forward, and start thinking creatively with certain ingredients. They provide guides on how to pair recipes to make a more rounded vegan meal, while also having guides on how to make vegan alternatives for umami rich items like fish sauce.
Also do not sleep on the power of flaxseed eggs! Ground flaxseed can be found in most stores now by the alternatives flours and when mixed with water offers the binding properties of egg. I use them in a vegan stuffing I came up with for stuffed mushrooms and it offers that same feel that a meat stuffing would have!