Use These Three Ingredients to Make Your Favorite Thanksgiving Recipes “Vegetarian”
As I mentioned earlier , my 2021 Thanksgiving guest list is total vegans, vegetarians, dairy allergy sufferers, and lactose intolerant people. I’m not one of those. I love butter, cream, and animal fats, but I love challenges as well, so I’m enthusiastic about adjusting my recipes to accommodate such dietary restrictions. Everything is going very well.
Three ingredients – two store-bought and one homemade – make the transition to dairy-free, egg-free, and meat-free options too easy. With them I managed to make a vegetarian cornbread dressing, green bean casserole and my grandmother’s gravy, and I believe they can help you do the same if you so desire.
Better than chickpea broth and broth
I’ve been a fan of this entire line of salty soup bases for years now, but their vegetarian and vegan offerings are on a different level. The standard vegetable base is good, but the chicken – free base is outstanding. It tastes not like vegetables, but chicken stock, or at least what you imagine, it should taste like a generously seasoned chicken stock – salty, savory and satisfying. If you don’t want to taste like poultry, I recommend a roasted onion base , which tastes like a concentrated French onion soup.
You can use any flavoring for gravy, dressing, filling, or anything else that you would normally use turkey or chicken broth in. You can even add some roasted garlic base to the mashed potatoes to enhance the flavor. One teaspoon of base and 8 ounces of water makes 1 cup of highly flavored, flavorful broth, so adjust to suit your needs as needed. (And unlike quarts of stock, small jars of base paste take up very little space in the fridge – a big plus at this time of year.)
If you just need to use homemade broth, make it with chickpeas . Not only is the color an accurate sign for something more meaty, it has a body and flavor that closely resembles your favorite chicken broth.
Best Egg Replacement For Vegan Eggs
This mung bean-based liquid makes a pretty decent gruel , but it’s also a fantastic binder – add 3 tablespoons of Just Egg for each whole egg you listed in your recipe. I wouldn’t use the Just Egg in complex pastries, but I’ve used them to make cornbread and subsequently corn dressing and haven’t noticed a single difference in flavor or texture. Use it wherever you need a little binder, including quick bread (with chemical leavening agents), casseroles, and (obviously) dressing and filling.
AA Newton’s Vegan Mushroom Cream
This substitution is not as easy as the other two because you have to do a bit of cooking, but trust me when I say it is totally worth your time. Not only is this the best vegan mushroom cream I have ever had, it is the best mushroom cream I have ever tried in my entire life (it is medium in length). The combination of powdered dried mushroom caps, heavily fried cremini, lots of onions and dark beer turns into a thick, almost too savory base, and then diluted a little with Tofutti sour cream. I couldn’t stop spooning it.
Its highest purpose is obviously a green bean casserole, but I wouldn’t want you to limit yourself here. Mash it over the potatoes, mix with the dressing (cup by cup!), Or add even more vegan sour cream and serve as a potato chip sauce. It is so good that you can eat it with a spoon.