Vegan recipes and technique

Addition, not subtraction

The dishes that work best without animal products are those never built around them. Chana masala, red lentil dal and caponata are not vegan versions of anything, and they are the sturdiest place to start.

Cooking that starts from removal leaves a hole where the fat, salt and savour used to be, then fills it with a substitute product. Cooking from a plant tradition never digs the hole. Shop from the places where pulses, brassicas, nuts and spices carry the plate: the Levant, the Indian subcontinent, Mexico.

Where savouriness comes from

Meat and dairy contribute three things, glutamates, fat, and the flavours of browning, and each has a plant answer.

Browning

Maillard browning is a reaction between amino acids and sugars, and vegetables have both of them. Mushrooms roasted at 220 °C (425 °F) for twenty-five minutes, onions taken past translucent to genuinely golden, cauliflower with charred edges: the chemistry that makes a seared steak taste of more than protein. Give mushrooms room on the tray or they stew.

Concentrated glutamates

Tomato purée is the cheapest depth in the kitchen, but only once you cook it out: two to three minutes in hot oil until it darkens from red to brick. Soy sauce, dark miso, dried shiitake and kombu supply glutamates directly, nutritional yeast adds a cheesy note, and smoked paprika supplies the smoke that cured meat brings.

Layer two or three savoury sources rather than tripling one. A ragu with roasted mushrooms, cooked-out tomato purée and a spoonful of miso tastes deep; the same dish with three spoonfuls of miso tastes of miso.

Texture is the real problem

Flavour is solvable with a jar of miso and a hot oven. Texture decides whether the plate feels like a meal, and it needs technique, not ingredients.

Press tofu. Firm or extra-firm, in a tea towel under a weighted plate for twenty to thirty minutes, so the surface browns instead of steaming. A tablespoon of cornflour per 400 g block gives a crust that survives sauce.
Freeze tofu. Freeze a block solid, thaw, squeeze it out. The ice crystals leave a sponge-like network behind: chewier, and it drinks up marinade.
Roast chickpeas. Dry them on a towel, because wet chickpeas will not crisp. Oil, then thirty to forty minutes at 200 °C (400 °F), seasoned afterwards.
Steam tempeh before frying. Ten minutes over boiling water takes out the bitterness and opens the block to marinade.
Use nuts for body. Soaked cashews blended with water are the closest thing to cream: you emulsify fat and protein rather than thicken with starch.

Contrast is what you are after: toasted seeds over a dal, quick-pickled onion on beans, herbs at the last second. Uniformly soft food reads as unfinished.

Protein sources, and how to cook each one

Approximate protein per 100 g, with the treatment each one needs:

Plant proteins, approximate protein content, and how to handle them
Ingredient	Protein, roughly	How to cook it well
Firm tofu	15, 17 g	Press, coat in cornflour, fry or roast hot. It carries whatever you season it with and nothing more.
Tempeh	19, 20 g	Steam ten minutes, then marinate and fry. Fermented, nuttier and firmer than tofu.
Red lentils	9 g	Fifteen to eighteen minutes and they collapse into a purée. Ideal for dal, useless where you want shape.
Brown or green lentils	9 g	Twenty to twenty-five minutes and they keep their skins. Salt at the end, or they stay chalky.
Chickpeas	9 g	Tinned is fine. Simmer them in the sauce for ten minutes so they take on flavour rather than sitting in it.
Black beans	9 g	Keep the liquid from the tin: it is starchy and thickens a chilli without any flour.
Seitan	around 25 g	Wheat gluten, so not for coeliacs. Simmer gently in stock; boiled hard it turns spongy.
Cashews	18 g	Soak four hours in cold water or fifteen minutes in boiling, then blend to a cream.

Crispy tofu with peanut sauce tests the first row: pressed tofu, cornflour, hot pan, four minutes a side, then peanut butter loosened with soy, lime and hot water, poured over at the table so the crust survives. Red lentil dal is the third: cumin, ginger and garlic bloomed in oil, lentils, twenty minutes, a tarka of mustard seeds.

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Baking without eggs

Eggs do four unrelated jobs in baking, binding, aerating, enriching, setting, and no replacement does all four. Choose by the job.

Aquafaba, the liquid from a tin of chickpeas, is the aerator: three tablespoons per egg white, whipped to stiff peaks in five to eight minutes.
Flax or chia egg is the binder: a tablespoon of ground flax with three of water, left ten minutes until gluey. No lift, so keep the baking powder.
Bicarbonate of soda with vinegar is the lift, for a sponge where you cannot taste the acid.
Silken tofu or apple purée adds moisture to brownies, and weighs a light cake down.

Aquafaba chocolate mousse is the technique at its most useful. Whip the liquid from one tin of chickpeas with 40 g of sugar to firm peaks. Melt 200 g of dark chocolate and cool it to about 35 °C (95 °F), barely warm on your lip. Fold a third of the foam in to slacken it, fold the rest through gently, chill two hours. Both failure modes are temperature: hot chocolate collapses the foam, cool chocolate seizes. More egg-free work is in the desserts guide.

Plant milks and where each one behaves

They are not interchangeable, and the difference is composition rather than brand. Soya carries real protein, so it behaves most like dairy in baking and it foams, though hot coffee curdles it unless the carton is a barista formulation. Oat is high in starch, which makes it sweet, thick and friendliest in coffee and creamy sauces; do not blend it hard, since agitated starch turns slimy. Almond is thin and poor at foaming, rice milk splits, and tinned coconut milk is a fat source.

For a savoury cream sauce, skip the cartons. Cashew cream pasta: blend 100 g of soaked cashews with 200 ml of water, nutritional yeast, garlic and lemon until smooth, then loosen with pasta water off the heat. It will not split against acid.

Iron and B12, briefly

Two nutrients are worth knowing about factually. Plant foods provide non-haem iron, which the body absorbs less readily than the iron in meat; vitamin C in the same meal, the lemon on the lentils or the tomato in the chilli, improves absorption, while tea and coffee with the meal reduce it. Vitamin B12 is not reliably present in unfortified plant foods, which is why fortified products and supplements exist.

That is the extent of what a cooking page should say, and it is not medical advice: if you are eating this way permanently, or pregnant, or feeding children, ask a doctor or a dietitian. The healthy eating guide covers the plate.

One base, three dinners

Almost every savoury dish above starts the same way, so make the start once. Sweat two onions, two carrots and two celery sticks, finely chopped, in olive oil for fifteen minutes. Add 400 g of chopped mushrooms and cook off their water, stir in three tablespoons of tomato purée, fry it to brick red, then two of soy sauce. Five days in the fridge, three months frozen.

Mushroom ragu. A third of the base, red wine reduced away, a tin of tomatoes, forty minutes at a bare simmer, tossed with pappardelle.
Black bean chilli. A third, plus cumin, smoked paprika and chipotle, two tins of black beans with their liquid, twenty-five minutes.
Lentil shepherd's pie. The last third with green lentils and stock, under olive-oil mash, forty minutes at 200 °C (400 °F).

Three dinners from an hour of work, and the logic scales to a week in the meal prep guide. For nights when even that is too much, the 30-minute dinner guide carries the pan technique, and roasted cauliflower with tahini comes in under it: florets with oil and cumin, twenty-five minutes at 220 °C (425 °F), then tahini let down with lemon.

Frequently asked questions

How do I stop tofu tasting of nothing?

Tofu has almost no flavour of its own, so the flavour has to come from the surface and the sauce. Press out the water, coat it in cornflour, and brown it properly on at least two sides, then add the sauce after it is crisp rather than marinating it beforehand. Marinade soaks into wet tofu barely at all.

What actually replaces the savoury depth of meat?

A combination, not a single product. Roasted or well-browned mushrooms, tomato puree fried until it turns brick red, and one salty fermented ingredient such as soy sauce or miso will get you most of the way. Smoked paprika supplies the smoke that cured meat usually brings.

Can I use the liquid from any tin of beans as aquafaba?

Chickpea liquid is the reliable one, because its protein and starch balance whips best. Liquid from other beans is thinner and often greyer, and unsalted tins give a cleaner result than salted ones. Use it straight from the tin, cold, with a clean and completely grease-free bowl.

Which plant milk should I use in a cream sauce?

None of the cartons, ideally. Blended soaked cashews give body from fat and protein rather than starch, so they hold together against acid and heat. If you must use a carton, soya handles heat better than oat or almond, and none of them like a hard boil.

Do I need to combine proteins at every meal?

No. The idea that plant proteins must be paired within a single meal has long since been set aside; eating a varied range of pulses, grains, nuts and seeds across the day is what matters. Practically, most of the dishes on this page already pair a pulse with a grain anyway.

Why did my vegan mousse go runny?

Almost always the chocolate temperature. If it is hotter than about 35 C when it meets the aquafaba foam, the bubbles collapse and it never sets. Fold a third of the foam in first to slacken the chocolate, then fold the rest through gently and chill for at least two hours.

Is vegan food automatically healthier?

Not automatically. A plate built from pulses, vegetables, whole grains and nuts is a genuinely good one, but crisps, biscuits and a lot of packaged meat substitutes are also vegan. The useful question is what the meal is made of, not what it leaves out.