Animal product-free recipes

clockwork.satan

clockwork.satan

clockwork.satan

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It would seem that the most of the posts here are very meat-centric so I thought it would be a good idea to make a post for recipes that are free from animal products. I'm pretty sure there must be other veggies and vegans on here too.

Having lived with my (whisper it) vegan wife-to-be for 4 years now, I've had to completely reassess the way that I make food, and since she doesn't do cooking it's been a rather experimental process. I started out as a meat-eater when I met her but have been constantly surprised by how tasty and satisfying meat-free food can be that I've embraced veganism myself.

Now, the disclaimer here is that this is me asking for recipes and not what your opinions on veganism are. I'm not a tree-hugging animal rights activist or anything like that!

So... Lemme see what you lot can come up with!
 
I don't have a recipe but a vegan friend of mine made amazing cheesecake using coconut cream and cocoa nibs. I'm not sure how helpful that is but...might be a starting point for something :)
 
The only veggie food worth considering is looking cuisines in places like India where vegetarian cooking has been a way of life for a long time, not just some 20th century fad.
Curries with lots of lentils, bans pulses and nuts etc are very nutritious and filling, super tasty, and doesn't feel like the dish is entirely incomplete. Too many western recipes are variants of "here is some veggies in tomato sauce with pasta', would be OK with a slab of meat next to it. Simply not adding meat or substitution meat for some weird fungal detritus is not coking vegetarian.
 
I love Aubergine spaghetti, simple normal evening meal

1 x aubergine
1 X Onion
1 x can of tomatoes
1 x stock cube
1 teaspoon oregano
Spaghetti

Method:
1) Peel and dice the onion, add to a saucepan with a little olive oil and fry over a low heat until translucent
2) peel and cube the aubergine, 3/4-1cm cubes and throw in with the onions, increase the heat to medium and fry for a few mins.
3) add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 45+ mins until reduced to spag bol consistency and aubergine has lost it's rawness texture.
4) meanwhile cook the spaghetti in slated water.
5) server

Anything else vegetarian I eat has cheese or eggs in it.
 
Lentil Moussaka is awesome. Pretty sure I've posted the recipe once. Omit the bechamel sauce

You can add any diced vegetable to it. Made some with swede over the weekend. I add mushrooms as it adds that 'umami' factor
 
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uv said:
I absolutely love this beetroot curry and it's completely vegan:

http://www.jamesmurphyphoto.com/2014/08/rick-steins-far-eastern-odyssey-beetroot-curry-serves-4-2/

Though the recipe for the SriLanka powder is in the book, and not on that website :p

If you've got Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey book, check the recipe out :)
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That sounds utterly amazing! Thank you for your open-minded replies, folks!

Here's something I've managed to perfect over time, which you can use to impress your vegan friends - vegan macaroni cheese, the ultimate comfort food! This makes enough for two people and you will be surprised that there's no dairy in it.

You will need:
1: Pasta! It doesn't have to be macaroni - conchigli, riggatoni or spirali work just as well
2: 1 pint of soya milk (plus more for if the sauce turns out to be too thick)
3: 1/3 of a block of Tesco medium soya cheese
4: 1/3 of a block of Vio-Life mild cheese, which is available at Tesco, Holland & Barret and increasingly at most supermarkets. I add this in addition to the Tesco cheese because it gives everything a lovely smooth consistency
5: 1/3 of a tub of Tesco Free-From cheddar cheese spread
6: 1tspn of English Mustard
7: Salt & Pepper to taste

Step 1: Add 1 pint of Soya milk to a pan and put on a medium heat.
Step 2: Fill another pan with water, add a sprinkling of salt and put on a high heat to boil (for the pasta).
Step 3: Add a teaspoon of English Mustard and about 1 teaspoon of salt to the soya milk, and stir it in.
Step 4: Add 1/3 of a tub of Tesco Free-From cheddar spread to the soya milk. Don't let the milk boil, so turn the heat down if it gets too bubbly.
Step 5: While the spread is softening, finely grate 1/3 of a block of the Tesco medium soya block and 1/3 of a block of the Vio-Life.
Step 6: Give the milk a stir and make sure that the cheddar spread has softened nicely, then dump all of the grated cheese into the pan and stir it in.
Step 7: At around this point the water for the pasta should be boiling, so put on as much pasta as you'd like for two people. I never bother weighing, but I'd probably say that about 200-300g should be plenty! It should take about 10-15 mins for the pasta to cook.
Step 8: Keep stirring the cheesy sauce. Once it has become become nicely smooth and thick, turn the heat right down. If you judge it to be too thick, add some more Soya milk. Have a taste and add more salt and a little crack of pepper if you deem it to be under-seasoned.
Step 9: Once the pasta is nicely cooked, thoroughly drain it as even a tiny amount of water in this sauce will cause it to curdle! Dump all of the pasta into the sauce and give it a good stir. At this point, if I have it in the fridge, I add a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach and stir it in, as well as 2-3 chopped leaves of fresh basil.

Serve with chips and/or nice crusty bread! :)
 
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I'm curious, do vegans also avoid other day to day products made with animal? Stuff like hair gels, sugar, plastic bags come to mind but there are many more products you would not initially associate with animals
 
Gammawolf said:
I'm curious, do vegans also avoid other day to day products made with animal? Stuff like hair gels, sugar, plastic bags come to mind but there are many more products you would not initially associate with animals
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Yes, a lot of big brands out there test on animals cosmetics etc...

I believe all medicine in the UK has to be tested on animals but I'd rather carry on living than die not using medicine. There's certain exceptions I'd make... For instance the hand wash in toilets though probably tested on animals I'll use it rather than spreading germs.

There's no leather/fur too.
 
How do you cope with the practicalities of choosing what to use/eat? It came to my mind because of scenarios like sugar for example, a lot of refined sugar is made with bone char from cattle (to achieve its whiteness). But even if you find sugar not made with bone char it could potentially be included in any products like pasta sauces etc. It's all labelled as vegan friendly because you actually consume no animal product but it would maybe contradict a lot of vegan philosophy's about animal welfare and such? The hair gel is an extension of this too, it won't be labelled as vegan since you don't consume it but some hair gels use chitin which is extracted from crustacean shells like prawns and shrimp.

I did have a funny experience though when I was walking past a cosmetics section recently. The lady was giving the ol' sales spiel and mentioned that no animal testing was involved, to which I asked her "So you're testing for cancerous and carcinogenetic properties on the customers?!" bit of a in jest statement on my part as I'm sure they're safe (hopefully). But she stopped trying to sell to us at that point :(
 
It really depends on what 'level' of vegans people are. My partner and I jokingly refer to completely intolerant vegans (as in ones who absolutely refuse to use any animal-derived products such as leather or feed their cats meat) as a 'Level Ten Vegans'. We're not quite as absurd as we accept that it's nigh-on impossible to be 100% vegan and accept that certain products are just better when made out of leather (we just bought our horse a leather saddle, for example), but we do our best to avoid animal products at every other opportunity when we can.

So.. I guess that makes us about level six or seven. :D

And food is certainly an area where we know that, providing that products are labelled properly, we can strive to be as animal-friendly as possible. I make 90% of our meals from scratch and never buy ready made pasta sauces and stuff, so I know that there's no animal products in them. The other half wouldn't eat them otherwise.

Incidentally, since I stopped eating dairy products I've now become ridiculously lactose intolerant. I accidentally let a colleague go out and buy coffees a couple of weeks ago without mentioning the vegan thing and she bought a cappucino which was really lovely but hoo, boy. The after-effects were not nice.
 
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I'm not vegan, but I eat chana masala probably once a week.

There recipe I use is this one.

It's:

- Cheap
- Nutritious
- Pretty easy to cook
- Vegan
- Scratches the take-away curry itch
 
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