I love cooking. I love cooking almost as much as I love eating, and I really love eating. I also happen to be vegan. Most people assume that vegans only eat salads or bland tofu, or worse, that we eat grass! (Yes, I have actually been asked if I eat grass.) While I enjoy a good salad or slab of tofu (hold the grass), I often find myself craving other things, like mac and cheese or a burger with fries. It's not that I want to go back to eating animal products, I just want to enjoy the comfort foods that I have loved my whole life. So, since I love cooking, one of my favorite things to do is to turn typically non-vegan comfort foods into easy-to-make, non-weird vegan options. And, as it turns out, it is actually pretty easy to make vegan, semi-healthy, totally delicious food.
While being vegan has some awesome ethical benefits (yay for guilt-free eating!), there are also many health benefits. Plant based diets have been proven to reverse the effects of many diseases, and they tend to be lower in fat and cholesterol. Admittedly, the "comfort foods" that I love to make are not as healthy as a salad, but it still is slightly healthier than regular comfort food without negative qualities of the actual dairy and meat. I totally understand that a vegan lifestyle is not for everyone, but I wanted to share some of my recipes in the hopes that people might see that it's really not as difficult or weird as it seems to be vegan.
One of my current obsession is chicken salad on avocado. Since I obviously don't eat the chicken or mayo that is traditionally in chicken salad, I had to come up with my own version to satisfy my cravings. Try out my recipe and see what you think!
Before getting started, I have to admit that I am not very good about measuring while cooking... I generally just eye ball my measurements unless I'm baking. My philosophy is just try it and if it doesn't work, try something else next time. The amounts listed below are estimates of what I use, so don't worry about getting them exactly correct. One tip though, start with a smaller amount of mayo and sour cream than you would think you might need. Mix it in and then see if you need more. A little goes a long way.
INGREDIENTS:
1 package of Gardein meatless crispy chick'n
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion (I use yellow onion)
1 cup vegan mayo (I prefer Just Mayo or Earth Balance brands)
2/3 cup vegan sour cream (I like Tofutti brand)
2-3 tablespoons of relish
1-2 tablespoons of yellow mustard
1-2 tablespoons of brown or dijon mustard
1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice
garlic powder
onion powder (optional)
sesame seeds
salt and pepper
avocados for serving (optional)
PROCESS:
The first step is to sauté the meatless chick'n. Heat a pan on the stove and add some olive or grapeseed oil to the pan. When the oil is hot, add your chick'n to the pan. (In the chick'n package there is a pouch of sauce, which you won't need.) Cook the chick'n on medium heat until browned on both sides. While it's cooking, you can season it with the garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and sesame seeds.
Once the chick'n is done, set it aside. Chop the celery and the onion, and add to a medium-sized bowl. Roughly chop the chick'n into smaller pieces and add to the bowl.
Add the vegan mayo and sour cream, both kinds of mustard, the relish, and the lemon juice to the bowl, and mix.
Once the wet ingredients are evenly mixed with the veggies and the chick'n, add all the seasonings to the bowl (you should season again, even if you seasoned the chick'n in the pan). The trick to vegan cooking is to season very generously! Since there aren't animal products to add flavor, it's necessary to up the seasoning levels. I think that's why many vegan foods are bland and people don't like them - they are seasoned like regular food and that just isn't good enough.
Anyway, add the seasonings to the bowl. A good gauge to go by is to do a light covering across the whole top of the ingredients in the bowl. You can always taste it and add more. So if you're not sure, add a little and then taste, and just keep going until you like the flavor!
Once everything is mixed together, your vegan chick'n salad is ready! Yay! Now you have to choose how you will eat it. You can put it on bread, on a bun, wrap it up in lettuce, on a salad, etc. Currently my favorite thing to do is to put it on top of an avocado. I definitely recommend doing this. Get an avocado, and cut it in half. Remove the pit. The trick for doing this (if you don't know this already), is to VERY CAREFULLY karate chop the pit with your knife. Then you twist the knife and the pit will just pop out of the avocado. The tricky thing is then getting the pit off the knife. I usually bang the handle of the knife on the edge of the garbage until it falls off.
So first, I decided to be fancy and put the chick'n salad in the avocado, which looks great, but isn't very practical for eating. So then I scored the avocado and scooped it out on to the plate. Then, I just laid the chick'n salad on top of it and it was ready to go!
I hope that you decide to try this out whether you're vegan or not! I love cooking so much and it makes me happy to share it with you! Hopefully my directions are easy to follow. If you do try it out, let me know how it goes in the comments! Happy cooking! :-D
Choose Happiness.