I am somewhat new to and bad at cooking food for myself, and I only want to cook vegan. Right now I pretty much only eat Tofu Fried Rice for every meal because that’s the only thing I’m good at making. I’ve been looking at vegan alternatives for lots of beloved foods, and there are a lot. Basically every single popular dish I have web-searched for has had a vegan recipe for it. Thought maybe it would be faster to ask for the exceptions, because my search engine gave irrelevant results. Any info?
NEVER make vegan toffee. Worst mistake of my life.
I went typed all the below first to try and work through different cuisines, and dishes that can be recreated.
Basically the more processed a meat dish is the easier it is. The closer it is to whole/raw the more difficult.
It’s mostly “delicacies” or whole animals. Like your not gonna be able to mock a crayfish boil or a Hawaiian style lulo roast pig, or even like a rotisserie chicken. You can mock cuts of those things, sans the crawfish easy enough. I don’t see a market emerging for things like eyeballs, brains, rocky mountain oystes, etc mocks either.
For sure: Crawfish boils.
Less: Raw oysters maybe? Lobster/crab in shell.
Other than that it’s more like “delicacies” or whole animals
The below is dishes that can be created, read if you want.
They’re getting better and better at mock stuff. Jerky was a big one for me for a bit but there’s some solid mocks now.
People are getting really clever with fermentation. Dairy/mammal fermentation for cheeses has been around for thousands of years but people are currently doing some really cool stuff with plant fat fermentation. You’re not going to get every cheese variety but they’re getting closer and closer. Some might be harder to mass produce as well, or too expensive too.
Baking too, people have been baking with animal fat for thousands of years, plant fat reacts differently but they’re catching up.
It doesn’t happen to everyone I guess but for me the further I get from animal products the less desire I have to specifically recreate them vs getting the appropriate vibes.
Like any of the American fast comfort food, burgers, pizzas, scrambled/fries eggs, wings, Mac, nuts, tenders, breakfast burritos, bacon, sausage all have vegan versions that hold up or also are really good.
In socal the last few years there’s been a huge improvement in mexican vegan mocks. For a bit it was mostly “healthy” versions with veggies, beans, cacti, or jackfruit mocks. Soyrizo was the first. Now you can get asada, Pollo, carnitas, al pastor etc in the same greasy flavorful way without animal products. Easy to find empanadas
There’s been a strong presence of vegan soul food for awhile now in south/central LA. Ribs, fried chicken, grits, red beans and rice, wings, all have good mocks now.
Any Asian cuisines that have any decent Buddhist size population has been doing mocks for years. Thai, Chinese, viet, super easy to find. Throw Indian food in there.
Vegan sushi, which forbawhile was just veggie based, like avo/cuc rolls, which are still super fire, has had a lot of progress with their mocks as well. A lot of it is taro based, so while it’s good it’s still lacking in protein.
It’s harder to find vegan Filipino food, but that’s more of a demand thing than anything else IMO.
Shawrma/Gyro mocks are easy enough.
English food is easy enough. I’ve had full English breakfasts breakfast and vegan mock pies that were great. Sheperd(dess) pies are easy and one of my go tos, to make/bring for holiday parties.
I don’t know African meats/cuisine very much, I’ve only had Ethiopian food and that was after I went vegan. Ethiopian food has a lot of vegetarian foods built in anyway. I remember my friend talking about whole roasted split goat that would be hard.
I don’t know enough about Russian/Baltic cuisine either. I’ve had vegan piroshkis, that’s about it.
Anything deep fried is easy enough.
