These 12 essential foods & tips to help you transition to vegan are a collection of tips and tricks to make it easier when you’re first starting out down the vegan journey.
Or maybe you’ve just started a mixed diet relationship and are looking to help make your vegan-non-vegan relationship work.
These are some of the fundamentals of easy whole foods plant based cooking, which will make you love your new way of eating without the hassle.
What are the 12 Food Tips for the Vegan Kitchen?
Stock ‘nooch’ (nutritional yeast)
Make instant parmesan cheese
Vegan cashew sauce
Vegan mayonnaise
Vegetable stock
Vegan soups
Vegan mozzarella
Quinoa
Gluten free vegan pizza
Instant sauce trick
How to cook dried pulses
How to store fresh ginger
One thing some people find difficult is giving up cheese.
But with vegan recipes like vegan parmesan and mozzarella you can soon forget about the old cheese and feel excited to be free from it.
There are loads more vegan FAQ and some more which we don’t even realise we have. So on this page is a collection of tips and tricks to help make the transition easier.
So Here They Are! 12 Food Tips for the Vegan Kitchen
And at the end, after tip 12, there are some other random tips too . . .
#1 Stock ‘Nooch’ or Nutritional Yeast
Nutritional yeast is made of flakes which you can pour on top of your food or use in recipes to add a cheesy type flavour.
As with lots of things, you might find the flavour strange at first but it will soon become your new best friend!
See #2 below.
#2 Make Instant Parmesan Cheese
Make Instant parmesan cheese and keep it for sprinkling on your pasta, potatoes or salads.
This is such a simple trick that will make your life much easier because whenever you would normally add grated cheese, you can reach for your vegan parmesan and sprinkle it on top of your meal.
It goes great on pasta, in potatoes, on rice, in soups and anywhere you would add grated cheese.
How to Make Vegan Parmesan
Blend together raw unsalted cashews, nutritional yeast and salt.
The percentage of each ingredient is a matter of personal preference, as is the choice of how fine to make the finished cheese.
Start with 50% 50% with a pinch of salt and then adjust it to your taste.
#3 Keep Vegan Cashew Sauce in the Fridge
Vegan cashew sauce goes with everything (and it’s scrumptious).
Vegan cashew sauce is so easy to make, so delicious and so versatile you can make it at any time and use it with all your foods. To mention a few, it goes great in your Buddha Bowl, in wraps, with vegetables, alongside a Nasi rice or a Bami noodles dish.
You can make it slightly more sour by adding extra lemon and use it in place of sour cream on nachos.
Vegan cashew sauce also goes well on potatoes, chips and sweet potatoes. There isn’t much that this doesn’t complement.
How to Make Cashew Sauce
Add 1 cup cashews, juice from 1/2 lemon, a dash of apple cider vinegar and a pinch of salt to your hand blender or food processor.
Blend, adding water to get a slightly thinner-than-you want consistency. Keep blending until smooth and creamy.
Put it into the fridge to chill and it will thicken up slightly.
#4 How to Make Vegan Mayonnaise
Vegan mayonnaise really isn’t difficult to make and just for you incase you miss mayonnaise, here’s the simple solution. It takes a couple of minutes, no more.
To make vegan mayonnaise, just a blend 1 measure oil, 1/2 measure plant milk, dash lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. There are a few optional additional ingredients but that’s really the basics of a vegan mayonnaise.
However, as you get used to your vegan lifestyle you’ll find cashew sauce much more tasty and healthier than vegan mayonnaise.
Make Your Vegan Mayonnaise Directly in the Jar Where You’re Going to Keep it
Vegan mayonnaise
To take the only hassle out of this simple task, make vegan mayonnaise in the jar you’re going to keep it in.
Choose a jar with a large enough opening so that the hand blender fits directly into it and that has a tight fitting lid.
Blend the ingredients holding the hand blender upright with the base on the bottom of the jar until they emulsify.
Remove the hand blender, replace the lid and put the mayonnaise straight into the fridge.
Every time you cook something, after washing the veggies, cut out any bits you don’t want to use and save them in a pot in the fridge or a bag in the freezer, ready to make stock
This time-saving trick means that you can always whip up a tasty vegan stock for making soups or adding to sauces.
How to Make Vegetable Stock
Every time you prepare a meal, wash the vegetables and then cut out the parts you’re not going to use, but instead of throwing them in the compost, save them in a bag in the freezer, or in the fridge if you’re going to use them the same day.
When you want to make a sauce or soup, empty your bag of collected vegetables cuttings into a pan of lightly salted water and some herbs and simmer for 30 minutes.
You can also add a whole carrot, potato and any other veggies you like to boost the veggie flavour.
Strain the liquid from the veggie cuttings and use the liquid as a vegan stock.
I’ve heard so many complaints that quinoa has a horrible taste that I just had to include this in this list: the trick to great-tasting quinoa.
If you’re wondering why you don’t like quinoa, chances are you just aren’t washing it well enough.
Quinoa has a bitter outer coating of saponins, which is a natural deterrent for pests.
Most instructions say to ‘rinse’ quinoa but that’s misleading because when you first rinse it, nothing happens.
Stuffed eggplant served with quinoa
The water doesn’t instantly change colour, in fact it runs clear and you think you’ve done your job.
But not at all.
What you actually have to do is put the quinoa into a container full of water and rub the quinoa between your hands until the water turns completely cloudy. Once it starts clouding, you’ll find there’s a lot to remove!
Drain the water, refill and repeat.
You’ll need to do this about 6 times before the water runs clear.
Once it’s clean, cook the quinoa in a rice cooker just as you would cook rice and you’ll find it tastes yummy.
Cooking dried beans or chickpeas always seemed like a hassle to me because of how long you have to cook them for.
But that’s not the case anymore!
All you need to do is soak the chickpeas (for example) for about 5 hours (or overnight) in salted water. Then, rinse the chickpeas and cover with plenty of water and cook them in the rice cooker!
Now, because all chickpeas and pulses will vary and because chickpeas won’t absorb the same amount of water as rice does, the method is slightly different.
Instead of measuring the water and leaving the rice cooker alone to turn itself off, put in extra water intentionally and turn off the rice cooker manually after checking the chickpeas to see that they’re cooked.
Turn off the rice cooker and leave the chickpeas inside the rice cooker to continue steaming and finish off cooking.
This makes it so easy to enjoy real beans and chickpeas instead of pre-cooked ones.
You can cook a variety of beans in this way to make a 3 bean salad.
#12 How to Always Have Fresh Ginger to Hand
Buy some fresh ginger, chop it into small, thin slices and put it into a container with a good lid and straight into the freezer.
When you’re ready to cook, take out one of the slices and use a sharp knife to scrape off the skin. It’s instant, it’s easy, and it means you’ll always have fresh ginger available for cooking.
Vegan Omelette: If you love Spanish omelette this vegan tortilla recipe is actually extremely easy to make and absolutely delicious!
Basic Spices: For starter spices when you’re just starting out, begin with some cumin, and chilli, for chilli-bean type recipe flavour, plus some oregano. For curries, use turmeric, cumin, coriander and garam masala. Your use of spice can grow but these are great flavours to start out with. When you really get into wfpb, I’ve found that I need less and less in the way of spices as I enjoy more and more the plain flavour of the veggies.
Dried Herbs: If you’re not used to cooking with herbs, the top three to begin with would be oregano, basil and parsley. Oregano is quite pungent, and a classic in many sauces as well as in chilli-bean recipes. Dried basil (nothing like its fresh counterpart in flavour) can be used to substitute the fresh basil in tomato sauces and dried parsley is a very mild flavour that can be used safely without the worry of overpowering the flavour. The best way to get to know your herbs is to play around with them. For roasting vegetables you might like to try rosemary and thyme.
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