I'm not vegan/vegetarian but I've been trying to cook more vegetarian dishes lately since my two vegetarian friends...

I'm not vegan/vegetarian but I've been trying to cook more vegetarian dishes lately since my two vegetarian friends only cook abominations.

After my two months of test I conclude that vegetarian dishes need extra oil when compared to meat dishes (maybe because meat contains a portion of oil). You can cook some meat dish without using a lot of oil and it will taste good. For a vegetarian dish you need to add much more oil and can't cook too much to keep the flavor.

Do you agree? Anything to add? Any tips on what to try?

I'm trying to get into veganism but cheat sometimes with couple pizzas per month. All the food I cook for myself is vegan, I tend to often use tomato sauce for my dishes.
One of my favorite is boil either bulgur or rice and throw bunch of vegetables of choice in there along with a bit of tomato sauce, season to taste and let it cook until done or water evaporated.
Speaking from experience, a lot of taste is based on the spices you use. I don't use any oil whatsoever, all my food is cooked with water.
Bean stew is really nice to eat as well, I let a lot of big white beans soak over night, then when it is time for cooking I'll boil them for an hour, blend half of it in a blender, put it back in the pot along with carrots and garlic.
Again, season to taste and the longer it is boiling the better it'll be. The end product consists of a creamy stew that everyone can eat.
Again, I don't use any fat whatsoever, no oil or butter or whatever, and it tastes great. The key lies within proper seasoning.

>Do you agree?
Not at all, I never use oil

>Anything to add?
Preference for dietary fat is habituated and disappears when you stop eating it

I forgot to mention, I put a good amount of tomato sauce/purée in the bean stew also.

If you're cooking with a meat substitute like tofu or soya mince, fry it before adding flavour. If you don't fry tofu, it stays slimy and doesn't absorb seasoning. If you don't fry soya meat substitutes, then when you add anything liquidy (like stock or sauce) they soak it right up, so the soya stuff turns to mush.

If you're new to tofu, get the hard dry stuff from Chinese shops that you soak overnight. It's got a better texture and it doesn't go bad as quickly.

examples of vegetables?

Tried doing it with carrots, zucchini and tomatoes but ended too bland.

Add more salt/pepper/paprika powder/cayenne if it tastes bland, or just tomato sauce, that's what I do anyway.
I typically cook with onion, garlic, carrots, cherry tomato, sweet corn, mushroom, chopped fresh spinach (don't cook it for too long), scallion, peas, paprika.
I typically only use 4 or 5 of the aforementioned veggies in random order for each dish.
However rice/bulgur is very important here, as it will soak up all the water and juices from veggies, while making sure you feel full after a meal.
I don't like eating zucchini, or normal big tomatoes, however if I don't feel like eating chopped carrots I'll just grate them instead.

to be honest, all the advice here is pretty lame.

most important for any cooking is finding good raw ingredients, arguably even more so for vegan/vegetarian, since the flavour cant be masked as much. so go find a good and cheap source for veg+fruit, for me its and ethic supermarket in a bad part of town.

Id recommend to go with recipes as a beginner,
try tabouleh,falafel,russian korean carrot salad, barsczc with veg broth, whatever you feel like, there are a million dishes that are, or can be done vegetarian.
next is finding good recipes, seriouseats or luckypeach are the ones i browse, ottolenghi has good vegetarian recipes, but i dont want to shill, just lern how to figure out if a recipe is good, it comes with experience.
last is building a pantry, i most often cook sichuan/middleeastern/korean but it doesnt really matter, cooking vegetarian stuff is so much more fun if you have a large amount f spices,sauces and grain readily available

the seasoning is most important
try to experiment with a lot different of spices if you can afford it
plain salt and pepper is not enough
soysauce, whine (tho a lot of whine is not vegan), sake, roasted sesame seed oil,...are also a good addtion

Steam dem veggies son

I know you can look at celebrities with glowing skin, gloriously shiny hair, and ripply muscles ...and hear "oh they're vegetarian for more than 10 years" and think you should draw some conclusion from it that vegans are healthy or something. They're not. Money and a lot of time saving employees can buy some good appearances. But, working with a trainer hours at a time, and getting facials, deep tissue massages, and loads of organic pureed vegetables in a blender, and 40 supplements, etc...it can add up into a great hard body.

The vegans I know? Most are idiots, quite ugly, usually overweight or very underweight (and not in a good way) and have some host of problems, not the least of which is a mental health disorder. These are the same kinds of people who are missing critical thinking skills of reviewing bad webpages and medical advice, or even the kind of people who join cults. It's a type of counterculture rebellion, and less to do with actual healthy. It's trading one food disorder for another food disorder.

No, you don't have to use more oil in vegan cooking than you would in any other cooking. If you like quickly sauteed or steamed veggies, or baked foods, you'll like them in your vegan diet that way too. Flavors from herbs, citrus, vinegars, browning, can be a way to get something in your dish that isn't more fat. Not that fats are bad if you subscribe to new advice! But, lean protein is great and filling. There's a lot of calories in legumes, if that's your main replacement.

Sorry but this is awful advice. Fried tofu is nasty. Maybe you're using the word fry in a different way than I'm thinking, but either way you're wrong.

Tofu absorbs flavor fine without frying it first, and it's not slimy. You can get extra or super firm if you prefer it to be dense instead of soft and wet.

Honestly don't know if you're trolling or what. I've never had to soak tofu overnight even. You don't need to go to a Chinese shop to get extra or super firm tofu either... most supermarkets have it.

Depends on what you're making, OP. I don't generally cook my vegetarian stuff with lots of oil — you can get tons of flavor by using various spices or sauces, depending on your dish.

There are lots of great recipes to try. What dishes or ingredients are you looking to experiment with?

I add oil as source of calories since my TDEE is > 2000 kcal and I only eat two times a day. Two vegan dishes are only ~900 kcal.
>inb4 you gonna lose weight
I'm already 130 lbs.
Also I don't care about health or glowing skin, I'm just cooking vegan due to curiosity and to save money since meat is very expensive right now. I can buy a good bottle of olive oil that last for months for 1/20 the cost of a single month of meat.

Lots of people talking about spices. I have a problem with that. My vegan friends use a lot of spices then everything tastes like indian food. I'm tired of it and I want to taste the vegetables not the spice.
I'm gonna try
Maybe thats my problem. I go to the supermarket and just get the cheapest I can. Maybe running some tests with cheap vs expensive carrot/lettuce can tell if paying the extra price is worth.

Replying to agree with the first user. Instead of frying, try to hey the firmest tofu you can. Then leave out wrapped in paper towels and/or wrap in papertowels and microwave at short (1 min) intervals until dried.

>Manjaro XFCE
mah niggah

I would agree. Look at the traditional vegetarian dishes of India. All have a decent amount of oil or ghee in them. As a matter of fact steamed or boiled vegetarian dishes with no added fat are almost unheard of in mainstream Indian cuisine.

>My vegan friends use a lot of spices then everything tastes like indian food

Protip: there exist other spices than those used in Indian cuisine. Try some non-Indian seasoning to keep things from being boring.

What are you thinking of when you think of frying? If you ever get bean curd at a Chinese restaurant, it's not out of the packet and chucked in sauce and heated up a bit. You can see it's been fried, and fried properly, to get the chewy golden layer on the outside. Maybe I'm not adventurous enough with cooking but I've never had a dish with chunks of tofu that hasn't benefited from drying out the outside by frying or baking.

The tofu I said to soak overnight is rock hard out of the packet. You cannot chuck tofu skin straight into a dish and expect it to work. You cannot eat it as it is and keep your teeth. I would have thought the words 'hard' and 'dry' would make it fairly obvious I'm not talking about firm tofu.

>Any tips on what to try?
adding in meat and telling them not to worry, it's just tvp.

>I'm not vegan/vegetarian
I'm raw paleo-vegan, respect my pronouns.