Micah Stanley
A vegan diet made easy: Today we explain how to veganize fish, eggs, cream, bacon, mayo, and much more, i.e. how to prepare them from vegan ingredients.
Changing your diet to vegan: How to veganize animal foods
If you are planning to change your diet to vegan, you may be afraid of missing out on one or the other well-known taste. So that the lack of food does not lead to you going back to fish, eggs, or dairy products, we are going to explain today how you can veganize the following animal foods, i.e. prepare them with vegan ingredients in such a way that a similar taste and consistency can be achieved.
Many of these foods have long been commercially available, but they are not always recommended for long-term use, as they are highly industrially processed, preserved, and often contain numerous additives, which is why we prefer to produce them ourselves.
- Fish
- sushi
- egg/scrambled eggs
- mayonnaise
- bacon
- Various vegan kinds of cheese (cheese to gratinate, feta, mozzarella, parmesan, cream cheese)
- lasagne
- Gyros
- Stuffing for cabbage rolls
- tzatziki
- Herb sauce for asparagus
- Béchamel
- Herb butter
- Garlic dip
- Light dressings
- vegan cream
- dessert creams
- creams for cakes
- vegan ice cream
- Milk variations (see below)
- yogurt
- Tiramisu
Note: Who thinks that people who reject animal-based foods shouldn’t imitate them and certainly shouldn’t name the vegan imitations after the originals?
Vegan dairy products
Many people who go vegan have previously been vegetarians and now fear missing out on their beloved dairy products. However, vegan cream and cheese variations also taste great – especially if you make them yourself. There are also excellent types of milk, desserts, quark dishes, sauces, cream cheese, spreads, butter, and much more of milk-free quality. All recipes for dairy-free or vegan dairy products can be found in our article on healthy milk substitutes.
Vegan dips and mayonnaise
Dips and mayonnaises can also be made in vegan quality without any problems, either based on soy, almonds, or with the help of our universal cream. Of course, you could also use sunflower seeds or peeled hemp seeds as a basis.
- Vegan Tsatsiki (based on silken tofu)
- Vegan garlic dip (made from white almonds, oat cream, plant-based milk, psyllium husk powder, lemon juice, garlic, lovage, and parsley)
- Vegan mayonnaise made from soy milk, oil, and spices
Vegan remoulade
A delicious remoulade can be made from the above mayonnaise in no time – with pieces of apple, spring onions, capers, and gherkins.
Vegan Egg
Even a kind of scrambled egg can be conjured up in the vegan kitchen. You have the choice of using tofu as a base or chickpea flour. A special ingredient is Kala Namak, the so-called sulfur salt, which gives the tofu or chickpea flour the egg flavor. But even without sulfur salt and with delicious spices, the vegan scrambled eggs taste delicious.
- Without sulfur salt (tofu, silken tofu, tomatoes, lupine grist)
- Without sulfur salt (only with normal tofu)
- With sulfur salt (soy-free, made from chickpea flour)
If you need a binding agent for cakes, spaetzle, or other recipes in which eggs are used in conventional cooking, you have many options in vegan cuisine that can easily replace the egg.
This vegan egg substitute, which we use for spaetzle, gnocchi, patties, cakes, and much more, has proven particularly effective in our cooking studio. It is a mixture of corn semolina and locust bean gum.
Vegan Fish
While there have been vegan meat substitute products on the market for some time, nothing comparable has been available when it comes to fish. With a few tricks and very simple ingredients, however, a fish-like taste can be conjured up.
For our vegan pickled fish, on the other hand, we used aubergines that are breaded in a mixture of seaweed powder and flour and deep-fried in oil.
Fish cakes are also possible in vegan form, just like fish fingers. Natural tofu is a very good basis for all three of the following recipes.
Vegan sushi
Sushi is already known to be coated with the typical nori leaves (seaweed). These algae sheets alone lend a fine fishy aroma. We didn’t even use rice for our sushi variations because we didn’t want to use polished rice and sushi with brown rice doesn’t really work. Instead, we wrapped refined, seasoned mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes in the nori sheets:
Vegan sushi with rice
Sweet potato sushi with almond dip (with mashed sweet potatoes in nori sheets with almond butter, almond milk, and coriander, seasoned with tamari and lemon)
Vegan ground beef
Vegan meat products are nothing special anymore. We, on the other hand, use sunflower seeds and almonds for Bolognese and make a vegan filling for cabbage rolls from tofu, sunflower seeds, and tomatoes – baked with homemade vegan cheese.
We also present two vegan lasagne variations:
- Vegan zucchini lasagne with béchamel sauce (gluten-free, with soy mince filling and vegan béchamel sauce)
- Pumpkin lasagne (with wholemeal lasagne sheets and a pumpkin bolognese filling and also a vegan béchamel sauce)
Vegan ground pork and vegan tartare
Vegan tartare can be made from aubergines, and even vegan ground pork is no problem: It’s hard to believe, but crumbled rice cakes with diced onions and a sophisticated seasoning lead to the desired result.
Vegan bacon
The complete opposite of real bacon is vegan bacon. While the real version is rich and greasy, vegan bacon is just light rice paper that is seasoned in a special way. So you eat the vegan bacon more as an interesting treat than as a nourishing food.
Vegan breakfast bacon (basic recipe):
- Sandwich with vegan bacon and ketchup
- Pea burger with vegan bacon
Now we wish you a lot of fun in the healthy vegan kitchen and a good appetite for all the presented delicacies.
Are vegans allowed to imitate animal foods or not?
It is often said that people who reject animal-based foods should not imitate them either. And if they do, they shouldn’t name their imitations after the originals. We would like to briefly explain why we do both very consciously. So we not only imitate fish, cream, bacon, etc. but also call the vegan variants that. Why?
First of all, there is no reason why you shouldn’t do it. In our recipes, you can usually find out in the title or at the latest in the description that the recipe is vegan.
Imitations make it easier to switch to a vegan diet
We imitate animal products because imitations make it easier to switch to a vegan diet and nobody has to go without the usual dishes. Given the incredible number of vegan delicacies, you can eat vegan without any imitations, but why not give everyone the freedom to choose exactly how they want to eat vegan – with or without imitations?
We name imitations in the same way as the original food, i.e. cream, bacon, fish, etc., so that everyone can have an idea of the recipe or the taste achieved in the recipe. Because no one could imagine anything under “seasoned rice paper”. Nobody would have guessed that this particularly seasoned rice paper tastes like bacon and therefore goes wonderfully with fried potatoes. And nobody would know that “pickled carrots” hide something that tastes like fish.
Since we put the term “vegan” in front of it in these cases or place the name itself in quotation marks, we avoid misunderstandings from the outset.
In human history, the plant variant often preceded the animal variant
Moreover, much that may look or sound like a knockoff is actually not a knockoff. After all, why shouldn’t there be different options and raw materials to achieve a certain taste or consistency? It is very likely that in many cases there was even a vegan version before the animal version.
Almond milk, for example, was certainly drunk long before our ancestors quietly thought about milking a cow. Mortared fermented nuts mixed with water and herbs may also have been eaten long before herb cream cheese.
And as far as meat and sausage imitations are concerned, the animal raw material (raw meat) tastes like nothing at all. Only spices and special preparation allow certain flavors to develop. So why not use other raw materials instead of meat, which – just like meat – are quite tasteless, such as tofu or jackfruit?
